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ANCIENT CLASSICS 

FOR 

ENGLISH READERS. 

EDITED BY THE 

Rev. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 

Price 2s. 6d., bound in cloth. 

The aim of the present series will be to explain, sufficiently for 
general readers, who these great writers were, and what they 
wrote j to give, wherever possible, some connected outline of 
the story which they tell, or the facts which they record, checked 
by the results of modern investigations j to prese7it some of 
their most striking passages in approved English translations, 
and to illustrate them generally from modern writers ; to 
serve, in short, as a popular retrospect of the chief literature 
of Greece and Rome. 

Volumes published — 

1. HOMER: THE ILIAD. 

2. HOMER: THE ODYSSEY. 

3. HERODOTUS. 

The Fourth Volume will "be published in May. 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES. 
Times. 

We can confidently recommend ' Ancient Classics for English 
Readers ' to all who have forgotten their Greek and desire to refresh 
their knowledge of Homer. As for those to whom the series is 
chiefly addressed, who have never learnt Greek at all, this little 
book gives them an opportunity which they had not before, an op- 
portunity not only of remedying a want they must have often felt, but 
of remedying it by no patient and irksome toil, but by a few hours 
of pleasant reading. 



Saturday Beview. 

If the other volumes are as well executed as this, the monthly issue 
will soon furnish excellent guidance to the whole field of classical 
literature, and when the way is thus rendered clear, good translations 
will be read with far more pleasure and discrimination. We antici- 
pate that the judicious and novel design of such a series will meet, as 
it deserves, with widespread and lasting favour; and that, with its 
success, juster ideas will more generally prevail of the characteristics 
of the great writers of old. 

Civil Service Gazette. 

No more happy idea has been conceived of late than that of which 
this is the first instalment. . . . Shall the day ever come when the 
glorious old classics, their wonderful mythology, their marvellous 
heroes and demigods, their poetic imagery and beautiful fancies, shall 
be altogether thrust aside, ignored, and forgotten ? We hope not. 
But to prevent such a contingency this most valuable digest of ancient 
classics for English readers has been projected, designed to be an in- 
troduction to the great writers of Greece and Rome, and a medium 
for making fair acquaintance with the outlines of their works and the 
style of their compositions. Those already versed in classic literature 
will thus be enabled lightly to refresh their recollections of their 
favourite authors ; and those who have never studied the originals will 
have the means of acquiring a knowledge of the stories, myths, and 
histories sufficient for air ordinary practical purposes. 

Vanity Fair. 

To such persons, who often in after-years feel keenly the neglect 
or want of opportunities for becoming acquainted with the world- 
renowned old Greek and Latin authors, and who, from press of occu- 
pation, are unable to recover their lost ground, these volumes will pre- 
sent themselves as a real boon ; and if the succeeding volumes come 
up to the standard of the one now before us, it is difficult to conceive 
how they could gain their knowledge in a pleasanter, clearer, or more 
concise form. . . . This well-printed handy little volume, then, de- 
serves our unqualified praise. There is many a Paterfamilias who, 
having for years past been obliged to listen in dignified but pusillani- 
mous silence to the sly classical allusions of his precocious offspring, 
will now be enabled, thanks to these little books, to carry the war into 
the enemy's country, and terrify and startle his astonished family by 
learned disquisitions on the character of Agamemnon, and pedantic 
conjectures as to the birthplace of Homer. 

Literary Churchman. 

We should be glad to see them on the table of every home where 
there are young people to be imbued with sound literary tastes, and 
to be informed as to the wealth of interest there is in books and sub- 
jects too commonly regarded by the young as matters of mere educa- 
tional business. 



Ancient Classics for English Readers 

? EDITED BY THE 

REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 



HOMER 



THE ILIAD 



The Volumes published of this Series contain 

HOMER: THE ILIAD, by the Editor. 
HOMER : THE ODYSSEY, by the Same. 
HERODOTUS, by George C. Swayne, M.A. 

Late Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 

The following Authors, by various Contributors, are 
in preparation : — 

VIRGIL. 

HORACE. 

^SCHYLUS. 

SOPHOCLES. 

ARISTOPHANES 

CICERO. 

JUVENAL. 

CAESAR. 

Others will follow. 

A Volume will be published on the 1st of every 
alternate Month, price 2s. 6d. 



HOMER 

it 



THE ILIAD 



BY THE. 

REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 

AUTHOR OF 
' ETONIANA,' ' THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS,' ETC. 



P " ' 



WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 

EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
MDCCCLXX 



D 



X> 






ADVEKTISEMENT. 



It is proposed to give, in these little volumes, 
some such introduction to the great writers of 
Greece and Eome as may open to those who 
have not received a classical education — or in 
whose case it has been incomplete and fragment- 
ary — a fair acquaintance with the contents of their 
writings, and the leading features of their style. 

The constant allusions in our own literature, 
and even in our daily press, to the works of the 
ancient classical authors, and the familiarity with 
the whole dramatis personam of ancient history 
and fable which modern writers on all subjects 
assume on the part of their readers, make such 
an acquaintance almost necessary for those who 
care not only to read but to understand. 

Even in the case of readers who have gone 
through the regular classical course in their day, 
this acquaintance, if honest confession were made, 
would be found very imperfect. It is said, of 

a. c. vol. i. 



7111 



A B VER Tl SEME NT. 



illustrate them generally from modern writers ; 
to serve, in short, as a popular retrospect of the 
chief literature of Greece and Eome. The attempt 
appeals, as will be seen, to a circle outside that of 
classical scholarship ; though possibly some who 
have all legal claim to rank as scholars, but who 
now stand rather on the " retired list " of that 
service, may in these pages meet some old 
acquaintances whom they have almost forgotten. 
If, in any case, they find our re-introduction 
unsatisfactory, none would advise them more 
heartily than we do to renew the old personal 
intercourse for themselves. 



The following Authors, by various contributors, 



are in preparation: — 

Homer — The Odyssey. 

Virgil. 

Horace. 

Herodotus. 

iEsCHYLUS. 



Sophocles. 
Aristophanes. 
Cicero. 
Juvenal. 



Others will follow. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION", 

CHAP. I. THE QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES, 
II. THE DUEL OF PARIS AND MENELAUS, 
III. THE BROKEN TRUCE, 
TV. THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE, 

V. THE SECOND DAY'S BATTLE 
YI. THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES : 
VII. THE THIRD BATTLE, 
VIII. THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS, 
IX. THE RETURN OF ACHILLES, 
X. THE DEATH OF HECTOR, 
XI. CONCLUDING REMARKS, 



PAGE 
1 

25 

48 

63 

69 

88 

94 

104 

113 

121 

128 

139 



It lias been thought desirable in these pages to use the 
Latin names of the Homeric deities, as more familiar to 
English ears. As, however, most modern translators have 
followed Homer's Greek nomenclature, it may be con- 
venient here to give both. 



Zeus 


= 


Jupiter. 


Here 


= 


Juno. 


Ares 


= 


Mars. 


Poseidon 


= 


Neptune. 


Pallas Athene 


= 


Minerva. 


Aphrodite 


= 


Venus. 


Hephaistos 


= 


Vulcan. 


Hermes 


= 


Mercury. 


Artemis 




Diana. 



The passages marked (D.) are from Lord Derby's tran- 
slation ; (W.) from Mr Worsley's ; and (P.) Pope's. 



1NTB0DUCTI0N. 



It is quite unnecessary here to discuss the question, 
on which the learned are very far from being agreed, 
whether Homer — the "Prince of Poets" — had any 
real existence ; whether he was really the author of 
the two great poems which hear his name, or whether 
they are the collected works of various hands, dove- 
tailed into each other by some clever editor of ancient 
times. Homer will still retain his personality for the 
uncritical reader, however a sceptical criticism may 
question it. The blind old bard, wandering from land 
to land, singing his lays of the old heroic times to a 
throng of admiring listeners, must always continue to 
be the familiar notion of the author of the Iliad and 
the Odyssey. Such was the universal creed of the 
world of readers until a comparatively recent date ; 
and the speculations of modern scholars, in this as in 
other cases, have been much more successful in shak- 
ing the popular belief than in replacing it by any 
constructive theory of their own which is nearly so 
credible. " Homer " is quite as likely to have been 
really Homer, as a mere name under whose shadow 

A 



2 HOMER. 

the poems of various unknown writers have been 
grouped. 

There is extant a Life of the poet, said to have heen 
composed by the Greek historian Herodotus, quoted, 
as such by early writers, and possibly, after all, quite 
as trustworthy as the destructive conjectures of those 
critics who would allow him no life at all. There w r e 
are told that his birth, like that of so many heroes of 
antiquity, was illegitimate ; that he was the son of 
Critheis, who had been betrayed by her guardian ; 
that he was born near Smyrna, on the banks of the 
river Meles, and was thence called " Melesigenes." 
His mother is said afterwards to have married a 
schoolmaster named Phemius, by whom the boy was 
adopted, and in due course succeeded to his new 
father's occupation. But the future bard soon grew 
weary of such confinement. He set out to see the 
world ; visiting in turn Egypt, Italy, Spain, the islands 
of the Mediterranean, and gathering material for at 
least one of his great works, the adventures of the 
hero Odysseus (Ulysses), known to us as the Odyssey. 
In the course of his travels he became blind, and 
thence was called " Homefos " — "the blind man" — 
such at least is one of the interpretations of his name.* 
In that state returning to his native town of Smyrna, 
he, like his great English successor, Milton, composed 
his two great poems. One of the few passages in 
which any personal allusion to himself has been traced, 
or fancied, in Homer's verse, is a scene in the Odyssey, 

* Said to be an Ionian term — "One who follows a guide." 
There are several other interpretations of the name, not neces- 
sary to be given here. 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

where the blind harper Demodocus is introduced as 
singing his lays in the halls of King Alcinous : — 

" Whom the Muse loved, and gave him good and ill — 
111, that of light she did his eyes deprive ; 
Good, that sweet minstrelsies divine at will 
She lent him, and a voice men's ears to thrill." (W. ) 

So, in the same poem, the only other hard who ap- 
pears is also blind — Phemius, who is compelled to 
exercise his art for the diversion of the dissolute suitors 
of Penelope. The fact of blindness is in itself by no 
means incompatible with the notion of Homer's having 
constructed and recited even two such long poems as 
the Iliad and the Odyssey. The blind have very fre- 
quently remarkable memories, together with a ready 
ear and passionate love for music. 

For the rest of his life, Homer is said to have 
roamed from city to city as a wandering minstrel, 
singing his lays through the towns of Asia Minor, in 
the islands of the Archipelago, and even in the streets 
of Athens itself, and drawing crowds of eager listeners 
wherever he went by the wondrous charm of his song. 
This wandering life has been assumed to imply that 
he was an outcast and poor. The uncertainty of his 
birthplace, and the disputes to which it gave rise in 
after times, were the subject of an epigram whose pun- 
gency passed for truth — 

" Seven rival towns contend for Homer dead, 
Through which the living Homer begged his bread." 

But the begging is not in the original lines at all, 
and a wandering minstrel was no dishonoured guest, 
wherever he appeared, in days much later than 
Homer's. Somewhere on the coast of the Levant he 



wm—m—mm 



4 HOMER. 

died and was buried, leaving behind him that name 
which retains its spell hardly weakened by the lapse 
of some twenty-seven centuries, and the two great 
poems which have been confessedly the main source 
of the epic poetry, the heroic drama, and the early 
romance of Europe. 

Other works are ascribed to Homer's name besides 
the Iliad and the Odyssey, but the authorship appears 
more doubtful. If we trust the opinion of Aristotle, 
Homer was the father of comic narrative poetry as 
well as of epic. The poem called i Margites,' attri- 
buted to him, contained the travels and adventures of 
a wealthy and pedantic coxcomb : but slight fragments 
only of this have been preserved — enough to show 
that the humour was somewhat more gross than one 
would expect from the poet of the Odyssey, though 
redeemed, no doubt, by satire of a higher kind, as in 
the surviving line which, in describing the hero's 
accomplishments, seems to anticipate the multifarious 
and somewhat superficial knowledge of the present 
day— 

" Full many things he knew — and ill he knew them all." 

Admitting the personality of the poet himself, and 
his claim to the authorship of both Iliad and Odyssey, 
it is not necessary to suppose that either poem was 
framed originally as a whole, or recited as a whole 
upon every occasion. No doubt the song grew as he 
sung. He would probably add from time to time to 
the original lay. The reciter, whose audience must 
depend entirely upon him for their text, has an almost 
unlimited licence of interpolation and expansion. It 
may be fairly granted also that future minstrels, who 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

sung the great poet's lays after his death, would inter- 
weave with them here and there something of their 
own, more or less successful in its imitation of the 
original. Such explanation of the repetitions and 
incongruities which are to he found in the Iliad 
seems at least as reasonahle as the supposition that 
its twenty- four books are the work of various hands, 
"stitched together " — such is one explanation of the 
term " rhapsody" — in after times, and having a com- 
mon origin only in this, that all sung of the " wondrous 
Tale of Troy." 

That tale was for generations the mainspring of Greek 
legend and song, and the inspiration of Greek painters 
. and sculptors. At this day, the attempt to separate the 
fabulous from the real, to reduce the rich colouring of 
romance into the severe outlines of history, is a task 
which even in the ablest hands seems hopeless. The 
legends themselves are various, and contradictory in 
their details. The leading characters in the story — 
Priam, Helen, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ulysses, Paris, 
Hector and Andromache — appear in as many different 
aspects and relations as the fancy of each poet chose. 
In this respect they are like the heroes of our own 
" Eound Table " romances \ like Arthur and Guinevere, 
Lancelot, Tristram, and Percival — common impersona- 
tions on whom all kinds of adventures are fastened, 
though the main characteristics of the portrait are pre- 
served throughout. What amount of bare historical 
truth may or may not underlie the poetical colouring — 
whether there was or was not a real Greek expedition 
and a real siege of Troy, less " heroic " and more pro- 
bable in its extent and details than the Iliad represents 
it — is no question to be here discussed. So far as liter- 



^^^^^■■■■^■^■■■■^^■■■iBa 



6 HOMER. 

ary interest is concerned, "the real Trojan war," as 
Mr Grote well says, " is that which is recounted by 
Homer." It will be sufficient here to take the poet as 
our main authority, and to fill up his picture from 
other legendary sources ; for though Homer's version 
of the Great Trojan War is the earliest account which 
has come down to us, he drew his material from still 
earlier lays and legends, with which he assumes all his 
readers (or hearers) to be tolerably familiar; and which, 
again, the later poets and tragedians reproduced with 
many additions and variations of their own. 

The preservation of poems of such great length (the 
Iliad alone contains between fifteen and sixteen thou- 
sand lines) in days when writing, even if invented, was 
in its infancy, has been the subject of much speculation. 
That they were publicly recited at great national festi- 
vals in all parts of Greece, is undoubted. Professional 
minstrels, or "rhapsodists," as they were called, chanted 
certain selected portions which suited their own taste 
or that of their audience — often such as contained the 
exploits of some national hero. They followed pos- 
sibly in this the example of the great bard himself; 
just as certain of our own popular writers have lately 
taken to read, to an admiring public, some favourite 
scenes and chapters from their own works. Lycurgus 
is said to have brought the collected poems from Asia 
to Sparta ; Solon, at Athens, to have first obliged the 
minstrels to recite the several portions in due order, 
so as to preserve the continuity of the narrative. 
Pisistratus, the great Athenian ruler, has the reputa- 
tion of having first reduced the whole into a collected 
shape, and of having thus far settled the "text" of 
Homer, employing in this work the most eminent 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

men of letters of his day. There is a legend of a 
Homeric ' Septuagint : ' of seventy learned scribes em- 
ployed in the great work, as in the Greek version of 
the Hebrew Scriptures. From the time when the 
Iliad and Odyssey were reduced to writing, their 
popularity rather increased than waned. They were 
the storehouse of Greek history, genealogy, and anti- 
quity — the models and standards of literary taste. To 
be unacquainted with these masterpieces, was to be 
wholly without culture and education : and, thanks to 
their continual and public recital, this want was per- 
haps less prevalent amongst the Greeks than amongst 
ourselves. The young Alcibiades, when receiving the 
usual education of a Greek gentleman, is said to have 
struck his tutor one day in a burst of righteous indig- 
nation, for having made the confession — certainly inex- 
cusable in his vocation — that he did not possess a copy 
of the great poet. Alexander the Great carried always 
with him the copy which had been corrected by his 
master Aristotle, preserved in a jewelled casket taken 
amongst the spoils of Darius. No pains were spared 
in the caligraphy, or costliness in the mountings, of 
favourite manuscripts of the Homeric poems. They 
continued to be regarded with almost a superstitious 
reverence even during the middle ages of Christendom. 
Men's future destinies were discovered, by a sort of 
rude divination, in verses selected at hap- hazard. Fan- 
tastic writers saw in the two poems nothing more or 
less than allegorical versions of Hebrew history ; and 
grave physicians recommended as an infallible recipe 
for a quartan ague, the placing every night a copy of 
the fourth book of the Iliad under the patient's head. 
Modern critical speculations have gone quite as far in 



H 



8 HOMER. 

another direction. In the eyes of some ingenious 
theorists, this siege of Troy is but " a repetition of the 
daily siege of the East by the solar powers that every 
evening are robbed of their brightest treasures in the 
West ; " * and the Homeric heroes and their exploits all 
represent allegorically, in one form or another, the 
great conflict between Light and Darkness. But such 
questions are beyond the scope of these pages ; we 
are content here to take the tale of Troy as the poet 
tells it. 
V^' The supposed date of the story may be taken as 
some fifteen centuries before the Christian era. The 
great City of Troy, or Ilium, lay on the coast of Asia 
Minor — its reputed site still bearing the name of the 
Troad, a broad well- watered champaign, with a height k 
still recognised as the citadel towering above it. "So 
royal seat of the ancient world," says a modern visitor 
to the spot, "could boast a grander situation than the 
Trojan citadel." t As to its actual locality and exist- 
ence, there is little ground for scepticism. The tradi- 
tion of the name and place was unbroken in the early 
historical ages of Greece. Xerxes, king of Persia, in 
his expedition, is said to have visited the citadel, and to 
have offered there a thousand oxen to the tutelary god- 
dess; possibly, it has been suggested, claiming to be the 
avenger of the Asiatic kings on their European enemies. J 
Mindarus, the Lacedaemonian admiral, seventy years 
later, sacrificed there also : and Alexander, when he 
crossed the Hellespont, not only did the same, but 
took from the temple some of the sacred arms which 

* Max Miiller ; Cox's Tales of Ancient Greece. 
+ Curtius's Hist, of Greece, i. 80. 
X Grote, Hist, of Greece, i. 271. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

were hung there (said to he those of the heroes of the 
great siege), offering up his own in exchange. The 
founder of the city was Ilus, son of Tros, and from 
these mythical heroes it took its two names. But 
its walls were built by the grandson, Laomedon. He 
employed some remarkable workmen. In one of the 
most striking and suggestive fables of the Greek myth- 
ology, certain of the gods are represented as being con- 
demned by Zeus (or Jupiter) to a period of servitude 
upon earth. Poseidon (Neptune) and Apollo were 
under this condemnation, and undertook, for certain 
rewards, to help Laomedon in his fortifications. But 
when the work was finished, the ungrateful king re- 
pudiated his bargain. As a punishment, a sea-monster 
is sent to ravage his dominions, who can only be ap- 
peased by the sacrifice of a maiden of noble blood. 
The lot falls upon the king's own daughter, Hesione. 
It is the original version of St George and the Dragon. 
Laomedon offers his daughter, and certain horses of 
immortal breed (which he seems to count even a more 
valuable prize), to the champion who will deliver her 
and slay the monster. Hercules comes to the rescue j 
but a second time Laomedon breaks his word. He 
substitutes mortal horses, and refuses his daughter. 
Hercules attacks the city, kills Laomedon, and carries 
off the princess Hesione, whom he gives to his comrade 
Telamon. From this union are born two heroes, Ajax 
and his brother Teucer, whom we shall meet in the 
second and great Siege of Troy, which forms the subject 
of Homer's Iliad. 

This double perjury of Laomedon' s is one supposed 
cause of the wrath of Heaven resting on the town and 
its people. Yet Apollo, forgetful, it would seem, of 



10 HOMER. 

his former unworthy treatment, and only remembering 
with, affection the walls which he had helped to build, 
is represented as taking part with the Trojans in the 
great struggle, in which the deities of Olympus are 
bitterly divided amongst themselves. 

But Homer's Tale of Troy says nothing of Laomedon 
and his broken faith. His poem is built upon a later 
legend. This legend embraces in the whole a period 
of thirty years, divided exactly, in a manner very con- 
venient for both poet and reader, into complete 'de- 
cades ; ten years of preparation for the siege, ten occu- 
pied in the siege itself (with which alone the Iliad has 
to do), and ten consumed in the weary wanderings and 
final return home of the surviving Greek heroes who 
had taken part in the expedition. 

The first decade begins with the carrying off from 
the court of Menelaus, king of Sparta, of his wife 
Helen, by a young Asiatic prince whom he has enter- 
tained in his travels. Helen is the reputed daughter 
of Jupiter by Leda, and upon her Venus has bestowed 
the fatal endowment of matchless and irresistible 
beauty. The young prince whom she unhappily cap- 
tivates is Paris or Alexander, son of Priam, king of 
Troy. Terrible oracles had accompanied the birth of 
him who was to prove the curse of his father's people. 
His mother Hecuba dreamed that she gave birth to a 
flaming brand. The child when born was exposed on 
Mount Ida, so as to insure his death in infancy with- 
out incurring the guilt of blood. But, as in similar 
legends, the precaution did but help to fulfil the pro- 
phecy. In the solitudes of the mountain he grew up, 
a boy of wondrous beauty, the nursling and the fav- 
ourite of Venus. There he was called upon to decide 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

to whom the "Prize of Beauty" — the golden apple 
thrown by Discord into the feast of the Immortals, 
with that insidious legend inscribed on it— should be 
awarded. Three competing goddesses — Juno, Venus, 
and Minerva, who at least, as the goddess of wisdom, 
ought to have known better — appeared before the young 
shepherd in all the simplicity of immortal costume, in 
order that he might decide which of them was " the 
fairest." Each tried to bribe him to adjudge the prize 
to herself. The Queen of Heaven offered him power 
in the future ; Minerva, wisdom ; Venus, the loveliest 
woman upon earth. Paris chose the last. It was 
Helen ; for Venus took it very little into her account 
that she had a husband already. It involved also, 
according to the most picturesque of the legends, a 
somewhat similar breach of troth on Paris's part. In 
the valleys of Ida he had already won the love of the 
nymph (Enone, but he deserts her without scruple 
under the new temptation.* He has learnt the secret 
of his royal birth, and is acknowledged by his father 
Priam. In spite of the warnings of his sister Cassan- 
dra, who has a gift of prophecy, and foresees evil from 
the expedition ; in spite, too, of the forsaken (Enone's 
wild denunciations, he fits out ships and sets sail for 
Greece. Admitted as a guest to the hospitable court 
of Menelaus at Sparta, he charms both him and Helen 
by his many accomplishments. The king, gallant and 
unsuspicious, and of somewhat easy temperament, as 
appears from several passages of Homer, leaves him 
still an inmate of his palace, while he himself makes a 

* It can hardly be necessary to do more than remind the 
reader how exquisitely this story is told in Tennyson's 
"CEnone." 



12 HOMER. 

voyage to Crete. In the husband's absence, Paris suc- 
ceeds — not without some degree of violence, according 
to some of the legends — in carrying off the wife, loading 
his ships at the same time (to give emphatic baseness 
to the exploit) with a rich freight of gold and treasures, 
the spoils of his absent host. So Venus's promise is 
made good, and Priam weakly receives into his palace 
the fatal beauty who is to prove the ruin of the Trojan 
fortunes. 

The outrage rouses all Greece to arms. Menelaus 
appeals to his brother Agamemnon, king of Argos and 
Mycenae, who held some sort of suzerainty over the 
whole of Greece. The brother-kings were the sons of 
Atreus, of the great house of Pelops, who gave his 
name to the peninsula known as the Peloponnesus, and 
now the Morea. It was a house eminent for wealth 
and splendour and influence. According to an old 
proverb, valour and wisdom were given by the gods to 
other names in larger measure, but wealth and power 
belonged of divine right to the Atridae. This power 
must not be hastily pronounced fabulous. There yet 
remain traces of the mural and sepulchral architecture 
of Agamemnon's capital, Mycenae, which are strongly 
significant of a pre-historical civilisation — an "iron 
age " of massive strength and no mean resources. * 
Agamemnon, in Homer's poem, carries a sceptre which 
had literally, not metaphorically, come down to him 
as an heirloom from the king of the gods. Yulcan 

* " Standing before the castle portal of Mycenae, even he who 
knows nothing of Homer must imagine to himself a king like 
the Homeric Agamemnon, a warlike lord with army and fleet, 
who maintained relations with Asia, and her wealth of gold 
and arts." — Curtius's Hist, of Greece, i. 115. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

himself had wrought it for Jupiter; Jupiter had given 
it to Hermes, Hermes to Pelops, and so it had been 
handed on. It was in some sort the prototype of 
those more than mortal weapons wielded by the heroes 
of medieval romance, which were one secret of their 
invincible prowess, and which had come from the 
hand of no human armourer ; like the sword Dur- 
entaille, which belonged to Charlemagne, and was by 
him given to his nephew Roland ; like Arthur's Ex- 
calibur ; or the marvellous blade Eecuite, which passed 
from the hands of Alexander the Great to Ptolemy, 
from Ptolemy to Judas Maccabaeus, and so, through 
many intermediate owners, to the Emperor Yespasian. 
To the monarchs of the house of Pelops, then, be- 
longed in uncommon degree " the divinity that doth 
hedge a king;" and Agamemnon is recognised, through- 
out the whole of the Homeric story, as pre-eminently 
"King of Men." But a terrible curse rested on the 
house — a curse connected with a revolting legend, 
which, as not recognised by Homer, needs no further 
notice here, but which was to find ample fulfilment in 
the sequel of Agamemnon's history. 

The royal sons of Atreus take hasty counsel with 
such of the neighbouring kings and chiefs as they can 
collect, how they may avenge the wrong. One legend 
tells us that Tyndarus, the reputed father of Helen, be- 
fore he gave her in marriage to Menelaus, had pledged 
all her suitors, among whom were the noblest names of 
Greece, to avenge any such attempt against the honour 
of the husband he should choose for her, whichever of 
them he might be : and that they now redeemed that 
pledge when called upon by the king of Sparta. Nes- 
tor, king of Pylos, and a chief named Palamedes, went 



M^H 



14 HOMER. 

through, the coasts of Greece, denouncing the perfidy 
of the foreign adventurer, and rousing the national 
feeling of the Greeks, or, as Homer prefers to call them, 
the Achseans. The chiefs did not all obey the sum- 
mons willingly. Odysseus — Letter known to us under 
the Latin form of his name as Ulysses — king of the 
rocky island of Ithaca, feigned madness to escape from 
his engagement. But the shrewd Palamedes detected 
the imposture. He went to the field where the king, 
after the simple fashion of the times, was ploughing, 
carrying with him from the house his infant child 
Telemachus, and laid him down in the furrow which 
Ulysses was moodily driving, apparently insensible to 
all other sights and sounds. The father turned the 
plough aside, and his assumed madness was at once 
detected. In some cases, where there were several 
sons of military age in the same family, lots were cast 
for the unwelcome honour of serving against Troy. 
Some even sent bribes to Agamemnon to induce him 
to set them free from their engagement. Echepolus of 
Sicyon, loath to leave his vast possessions, sent to the 
great king his celebrated mare (Ethe, the fleetest of her 
kind, as his personal ransom. The bribe was accepted, 
and (Ethe went to Troy instead of her luxurious master. 
The story has been adduced in proof of Agamemnon's 
greediness in thus preferring private gain to the public 
interests : but no less a critic than Aristotle has saga- 
ciously observed, that a good horse was a far more 
valuable conscript than an unwilling soldier. Some 
heroes, on the other hand, went resolutely to the war, 
though the fates foretold that they should never return 
from it alive. Euchenor of Corinth, though rich like 
Echepolus, could not be persuaded to remain at home, 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

even when his aged father, who was a seer himself, 
forewarned hirn of his doom; he boldly dared his 
fate, and fell at the close of the siege by the hand of 
Paris. 

Under somewhat similar auguries the great hero of 

V\Bomer's tale left his home for Troy. Achilles, said the 

legends, was the son of the ocean-goddess Thetis by a 

mortal lover, Peleus son of iEacus. The gods had 

honoured the marriage with their personal presence — 

" For in that elder time, when truth and worth 
Were still revered and cherished here on earth, 
The tenants of the skies would oft descend 
To heroes' spotless homes, as friend to friend ; 
There meet them face to face, and freely share 
In all that stirred the hearts of mortals there." * 

The Roman poet Catullus tells us in the same beautiful 
ode, how mortals and immortals alike brought their 
wedding gifts: Chiron the centaur ("that divine 
beast," as Pindar calls him) comes from the mountains 
laden with coronals of flowers for the banquet, and 
Peneus, the Thessalian river-god, brings whole trees of 
beech and bay and cypress to shade the guests. Even 
the three weird sisters, the inexorable Pates, tune their 
voices for this once into a nuptial hymn, and while 
their spindles " run and weave the threads of doom," 
they chant the future glories of the child that shall be 
born from this auspicious union. Neptune presents 
the fortunate bridegroom with two horses of divine 
breed — Xanthus and Ealius — and Chiron gives him a 
wondrous ashen spear. Both these gifts passed after- 

* Catullus' s Kuptials of Peleus and Thetis (transl. by Theo- 
dore Martin). 



\ 



16 HOMER. 

wards as heirlooms to Achilles, the offspring of this 
marriage, and were carried by him to Troy. 
s Achilles is the very model of a hero, such as heroes 
would be accounted in times when the softer and 
nobler qualities of true heroism were unknown. Strong 
and beautiful in person, as a goddess-born should be; 
haughty, and prompt to resent insult, but gallant and 
generous; passionate alike in his love and in his hate ; 
a stanch friend, and a bitter enemy. He is the proto- 
type of Sir Lancelot in many points — " the goodliest 
person that ever came among press of knights — the 
truest friend to his lover that ever bestrod horse — the 
sternest man to his mortal foe that ever put spear in 
rest." The epithet which Homer himself gives him is 
precisely that which was given to the English king 
who was held to be the flower of chivalry — "Lion- 
heart." Though in personal strength and speed of 
foot he excels all the other heroes of the expedition, 
yet he is not a mere fighter, like his comrade Ajax, but 
has all the finer tastes and accomplishments of an age 
which, however fierce and barbarous in many respects, 
shows yet a high degree of civilisation. Music and 
song beguile for him the intervals of battle, and, whether 
indignant, sarcastic, or pathetic, he is always an admir- 
able speaker. There is something of a melancholy 
interest about him, too, not inappropriate to a hero of 
romance, which the poet never allows us to forget. He 
has come to Troy with his doom upon him, and he 
knows it. His goddess-mother has told him that there 
is a twofold destiny possible for him : either to live in 
wealth and peace, and such happiness as they can 
bring, a long life of inglorious ease in his native land 
of Phthia, or to embrace in foreign warfare a brief career 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

of victory, a warrior's death, and undying glory. He 
makes his choice as a hero should — 

c ' One crowded hour of glorious life 
Is worth an age without a name." 

One fable runs that his mother, Thetis, dipped him 
when an infant in the river Styx, which made liim 
invulnerable in every point except the heel, by which 
she held him:* but there is no mention of this in 
the Iliad, and he goes into battle, for all that appears, 
as liable to wounds and death as any other mortal 
warrior, and with a presentiment that the last awaits 
him before the capture of Troy is complete. 

At length the ten years' preparations were all com- 
pleted. The harbour of Aulis on the coast of Bceotia 
was the place fixed for the rendezvous. From every 
quarter where the great race of the Achseans had 
settled, — from the wooded valleys of Thessaly, from all 
the coasts of the Peloponnesus, and the neighbouring 
islands, from Ithaca and Cephallenia on the west to 
Crete and Rhodes on the east — the chiefs and their 
following were gathered. A hundred ships — long half- 
decked row -galleys, whose average complement was 
about eighty men — were manned from Agamemnon's 
own kingdom of Mycenae, and he supplied also sixty 
more to carry the contingent of the Arcadians, who, as 
an inland people, had no fleet of their own. His 
brother Menelaus brought sixty; Nestor of Pylos, 

* The legend bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the 
hero Siegfried, in the German ' Nibelungen Lied.' By bathing 
in the blood of the slain dragon he acquires the same property 
of invulnerability, with the exception of one spot on his back 
which had been kept dry by a fallen leaf. And he meets his 
death, like Achilles, by a wound in that spot, dealt treacherously. 
B 



H^MH^^^HM 



18 HOMER, 

ninety; Idomeneus of Crete, and Diomed of Argos, 
eighty each. Ulysses and Ajax did but contribute 
each twelve galleys; but the leaders were a host in 
themselves. In all there were twelve hundred vessels, 
carrying above 100,000 men. "With the exception of 
the chiefs and two or three officials attached to each 
galley, such as the helmsman and the steward, all on 
board were rowers when at sea, and fighting-men on 
land. The expedition has been well termed a secular 
crusade. It was undertaken, as modern politicians 
would say, " f or an idea;" not for conquest, but for a 
point of honour. It might be questioned, indeed, how 
far the object was worth the cost. There was at least 
one of the neighbouring kings who at the time took a 
very unromantic and utilitarian view of the matter. 
Poltis, king of Thrace, was applied to amongst the 
rest for his assistance. He inquired into the cause 01 
the expedition ; and when he heard it, he suggested an 
arrangement which might accommodate all differences 
without the necessity of an appeal to arms. "It is 
hard," he said, " for Menelaus to lose a wife : yet very 
probably Paris wanted one. Now I have two wives, 
whom I can well spare; I will send one to Menelaus, 
and the other to Paris ; and so all parties will be satis- 
fied." But we might have lost the Iliad if his counsel 
had been taken. 

The great host set sail ; but the first time, says the 
legend, they missed their way. They mistook a part 
of the coast called Teuthrania for the plains of Troy ; 
and then, re-embarking, were driven by a storm back 
to the shores of Greece. A second time they made 
their rendezvous at Aulis ; but Agamemnon had in- 
curred the anger of Diana, and the fleet lay wind-bound 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

for many weeks. It was then that deed of purest 
tragedy was done, which, though it forms no part of 
Homer's story, has been so often the subject of song, 
of painting, and of sculpture, and has received so many 
illustrations in modern literature, that it must find 
place here. The king is informed by the oracle that 
the wrath of Heaven can only be appeased by the sacri- 
fice of his virgin daughter Iphianassa, or as she is more 
commonly called, Iphigenia. Eeluctantly, and only 
after a bitter struggle with his feelings, urged by the 
importunate clamour of the whole army, and in obedi- 
ence to his conception of his duties as their chief, the 
father consented. The story is immortalised by the 
anecdote told of Timanthes, the painter of Sicyon, 
when competing with a rival in a picture of the sacrifice. 
The point of admitted difficulty with both the competi- 
tors was to portray the agony in the father's features 
at the moment when the sacrificing priest was about to 
strike the fatal blow. The great artist represented the 
king as wrapping his face in the folds of his mantle, 
and was at once pronounced the winner of the prize. 
Mr Tennyson — never more successful than when he 
draws his inspiration from the old classical sources — 
has made tasteful use of both legend and anecdote in 
his ' Dream of Fair Women.' It is Iphigenia who 
speaks : — 

" I was cut off from hope in that sad place, 

Which yet to name my spirit loathes and /ears : 
My father held his hand upon his face ; 
I, blinded with my tears, 

" Still strove to speak : my voice was thick with sighs, 
As in a dream. Dimly I could descry 
The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes, 
Waiting to see me die. 



20 HOMER. 

11 The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat, 
The temples and the people and the shore ; 
One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat, 
Slowly, — and nothing more." 

There was, however, a less harrowing version of the 
legend. As in the parallel case of Jephtha's daughter, 
there were found interpreters who could not bear that 
the sacrifice should be carried out. They said that in 
mercy Diana substituted a fawn, and carried off the 
maiden to serve her as a priestess in perpetual maiden- 
hood at her shrine in the Tauric Chersonese. It is this 
version of the tale which the Greek tragedian Euripides 
has followed in his "Iphigenia in Aulis." Racine, 
in his tragedy, avails himself of a third version of the 
catastrophe. The victim whom Galenas' oracle demands 
must be a princess of the blood of Helen. This Aga- 
memnon's daughter was — her mother Clytemnestra 
being Helen's sister. But at the last moment another 
Iphigenia is found, offspring of a previous secret mar- 
riage of Helen with Theseus. The French tragedian, 
following Euripides in representing the princess as 
promised in marriage to Achilles, has given the neces- 
sary amount of romance to the denouement by introduc- 
ing the hero as an impetuous lover of the modern type, 
surrounding the altar with his faithful Myrmidons, 
and vowing that Calchas himself shall be the first 
victim — until the old soothsayer hits upon the expedi- 
ent of a satisfactory substitute. 

The wrath of Diana is appeased, the favouring gales 
are granted, and once more the Greek armament sets 
sail. They break their voyage at the island of Tenedos ; 
and from thence Menelaus, accompanied by Ulysses, 
who is the diplomatist of the army, proceeds to Troy to 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

make a final demand for reparation. Even now, if the 
Trojans will give back Helen and the treasures, the 
Greeks will be satisfied. But the terms were rejected, 
though the reception of the embassy at Troy seems to 
mark a high state of civilisation. So the expedition 
proceeds : but before they make good their landing on 
the Trojan coast, the Fates demand another victim. The 
oracle had said that the first who set foot on Trojan 
soil must fall. There was a hesitation even among the 
bravest of the Greeks, and the Trojans and their allies 
were lining the shore. Protesilaus of Phylace, with a 
gallant disregard of omens, leapt to land, and fell, first 
of his countrymen, by a Dardanian spear — launched, 
as one legend has it, by the noble hand of Hector. 
Homer has a pathetic touch in his mention of him : — 

i ' Unfinished his proud palaces remain, 
And his sad consort beats her breast in vain." 

On this slight foundation the Roman poet, Ovid, 
has constructed one of the sweetest of his imaginary 
' Epistles' — that of the wife Laodamia to the hus- 
band of whom she complains as sending no message 
home, undreaming that he had long since found a grave 
on the soil of Troy. A later legend tells us that she 
wearied the gods with prayers and tears, by night and 
day, to obtain permission to see her husband once 
again on earth. The boon was granted : for the space 
of three hours the dead hero was allowed to revisit his 
home, and Laodamia died in his embrace. There is a 
poetic sequel to the tradition, preserved by Pliny,* and 
thus beautifully rendered in the concluding lines of 
Wordsworth's ' Laodamia : ' — 

*Nat. Hist.,xvi. 44. 



22 HOMER. 

" Upon the side 
Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained) 
A knot of spiry trees for ages grew 
From out the tomb of him for whom she died ; 
And ever, when such stature they had gained 
That Ilium's walls were subject to their view, 
The trees' tall summits withered at the sight — 
A constant interchange of growth and blight ! " 

The Trojans, too, had their allies, who came to their 
aid, when the invasion was imminent, from the neigh- 
bouring tribes of Mysia, Caria, Phrygia, and even the 
coast towns of Thrace. The most renowned of these 
auxiliary chiefs were Sarpedon, who led the Lycian 
troops, and iEneas, commander of the Dardanians. 
Both claimed an immortal descent : iEneas was the son 
of Venus by a human lover, Anchises, and sprung 
from a branch of the royal house of Troy : Sarpedon's 
father was no less than Jupiter himself. Next after 
Hector, the most warlike, but not the eldest of the sons 
of Priam, these are the most illustrious names on the 
side of the Trojans in Homer's story. But the force of 
the invaders w r as too strong to allow their adversaries 
to keep the open field. Soon they were driven inside 
the walls of the city, while the Greeks ravaged all the 
neighbouring coast almost unopposed, and maintained 
themselves at the enemy's cost. Then began the weary 
siege which wasted the hopes and resources of both 
armies for ten long years. To the long night-watches 
round the camp-fires of the Greeks we are indebted — 
so the legends say — for at least one invention which 
has enlivened many a waste hour since, and also, it 
perhaps may be said, has wasted some hours for its 
more enthusiastic admirers. Palamedes, to cheer the 
flagging spirits of his countrymen, invented for them, 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

among other pastimes, the nobler game of chess ; and 
kings and castles, knights and pawns, still move in 
illustration of the greater game which was then being 
played on the plains of Troy. The inventor met with 
but an ungrateful return, according to one gloomy 
legend — which, however, is not Homer's. Ulysses had 
never forgiven him the detection of the pretence of 
madness by which he had sought himself to escape the 
service ; nor could he bear so close a rival in what he 
considered his own exclusive field of subtlety and strata- 
gem. He took the occasion of a fishing expedition to 
plunge the unfortunate chief overboard. 

So much of preface seems almost necessary to enable 
any reader to whom the Greek mythology is not 
already familiar ground, to take up Homer's tale with 
some such previous acquaintance with the subject as 
the bard himself would have given him credit for. The 
want of it has sometimes made the study of the Iliad 
less interesting and less intelligent than it should have 
been, even to those who have approached it with some 
knowledge of the original language. 

The galleys of the Greeks, when they reached the 
Trojan coast, were all drawn up on shore, as was their 
invariable custom at the end of a voyage, and kept in 
an upright position by wooden shores. The crews, 
with the exception of some two or three "ship-keepers" 
for each galley, disembarked, and formed some kind of 
encampment near their respective vessels. Achilles' 
station was on one wing, and that of Ajax on the 
other; these points of danger being assigned to 
the leaders of highest repute for valour. The chiefs 
fought in war-chariots of very light construction, on 



24 HOMER. 

two wheels and open at the back. These were drawn 
by two — or sometimes three — horses, and carried two 
persons, both standing; the fighter, armed with sword 
and shield, and one or two long spears which were 
nsually hurled at the enemy— and his charioteer, 
visually a friend of nearly equal rank. The fighters 
in most cases dismounted from their chariots when 
they came to close quarters, their charioteers attend- 
ing on their movements. The combatants of lower de- 
gree fought on foot. There is no mention of cavalry. 



THE ILIAD. 



CHAPTER I, 

THE QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 

Adopting for himself a method which has since be- 
come a rule of art, more or less acknowledged in the 
literature of fiction, the poet dashes off at once into the 
full action of his story. He does not ask his readers 
or hearers to accompany the great armament over sea 
from the shores of Greece, or give them the history of 
the long and weary siege. He plunges at one leap 
into the tenth year of the war. He assumes from the 
outset, on the part of those to whom he speaks, a 
general knowledge of the main plot of his poem, and 
of the characters represented : just as the modern 
author of a novel or a poem on the Civil Wars of Eng- 
land would assume some general acquaintance with the 
history of Charles I., the character of Cromwell, and 
the breach between King and Commons. Nine whole 
years are supposed to have already passed in desultory 
warfare ; but for the details of these campaigns the 
modern reader has to go to other sources, with which 



____^^^^^_^^^___^_^^^_ 



26 TEE ILIAD. 

also the original hearers are supposed to have heen ac- 
quainted. The Trojans and their allies are cooped up 
within the walls of their city, while the Greek hero 
Achilles has spread the terror of his name far and wide. 
The poet's exordium is of the very briefest. His invo- 
cation to the goddess of song is in just three words : — 

" Sing, heavenly muse, the wrath of Peleus' son." 

We have here the key-note of the poem brought before 
us in the very first line — nay, in the very first word, 
according to the original, for " wrath" stands first in 
the Greek, which it cannot very conveniently do in 
the English. The iwo great heroes of the Greek 
chivalry, Agamemnon and Achilles, always jealous of 
each other, come to an open quarrel in full council of 
the princes of the League. Their quarrel is — like the 
original cause of the war, like so many quarrels before 
and since — about a woman, a beautiful captive. A 
fatal pestilence is raging in the camp. The Sun-god, 
Apollo, is angry. To him and to his twin-sister Diana, 
the Moon, all mysterious diseases were attributed — 
not without some sufficient reasons, in a hot climate. 
Pestilence and disease were the arrows of Apollo and 
Diana. Therefore the Greeks have no doubt as to 
the author of the present calamity. It is " the god of 
the silver bow" who is sending his swift shafts of 
death amongst them. The poet's vision even sees the 
dread Archer in bodily shape. It is a fine picture ; 
the English reader will lose little of its beauty in Lord 
Derby's version : — 

" Along Olympus' heights he passed, his heart 
Burning with wrath ; behind his shoulders hung 
His bow and ample quiver : at his back 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 27 

Rattled the fateful arrows as he moved. 

Like the night-cloud he passed, and from afar 

He bent against the ships, and sped the bolt ; 

And fierce and deadly twanged the silver bow. 

First on the mules and dogs, on man the last, 

Was poured the arrowy storm ; and through the camp 

Constant and numerous blazed the funeral-fires. " 

In their misery the Greeks appeal to their sooth- 
sayer Calchas, to divine for them the cause of the 
god's displeasure. The Mantis or soothsayer, whose 
skill was in most cases supposed to be hereditary, 
accompanied a Greek force on all its expeditions ; 
and no prudent general would risk a battle, or en- 
gage in any important enterprise, without first ascer- 
taining from this authority the will of the gods, as 
shadowed out in certain appearances of the sacrifice, 
or some peculiarity in the flight of birds, or some 
phenomena of the heavens. In this particular ex- 
pedition it would appear that Calchas had turned the 
last branch of his art to good purpose ; it must have 
been his knowledge of the stars which had enabled 
him, as Homer tells us, to pilot the great fleet from 
their own shores to Troy. He confesses that he can 
read the secret of Apollo's present wrath; but he 
hesitates to tell it, dreading, he says, lest he should 
thereby anger the " great chief whom the whole host 
obeys." Achilles charges him to speak out boldly 
without fear or favour; none shall harm him — not 
even if he should denounce Agamemnon himself as 
the cause of this visitation, adds the hero, gladly 
seizing the opportunity of hurling a defiance at his 
great rival. Thus supported, the seer speaks out ; 
Agamemnon is indeed the guilty cause. In a late 
foray he had taken captive the maiden daughter of 



28 THE ILIAD. 

Chryses, a priest of the Sun-god, and the father had 
come to the camp of the invaders as a suppliant, 
pleading the sanctity of his office, and offering a fit- 
ting ransom. The great king had refused to listen, 
had sent him away with bitter words and threats; 
and the priest had prayed to his god to punish the 
insult : hence the pestilence. Immediately the popular 
voice — expressed loudly through Achilles — demands 
the maiden's instant restitution to her father. Aga- 
memnon, though burning with indignation alike 
against the seer and his champion, dares not refuse. 
His prerogative, however generally admitted and re- 
spected by the confederate army, is dependent in such 
extremities on the popular wilL He promises at once 
to send back the daughter of Chryses unharmed and 
without ransom. But at the same time, after a stormy 
and bitter dispute with Achilles, he announces his in- 
tention to insist on that chief resigning, by way of ex- 
change, a fair captive named Briseis, carried off in some 
similar raid, who had been awarded to him as his share 
of the public spoil. To this insolent demand the 
majority of the council of chiefs, content with their 
victory on the main question, appear to raise no 
objection. But Achilles — his impetuous nature roused 
to madness by the studied insult — leaps up and half 
unsheathes his sword. Even then — such is the Greek's 
reverence for authority — he hesitates ; and as he stands 
with his hand upon the hilt, there sweeps down from 
Olympus* Pallas Athene (Minerva), the goddess of 

* The mythology of Homer supposes the gods to dwell in an 
aerial city on Mount Olympus (in the north-east of Thessaly), 
whose summit was always veiled in cloud, and from which 
there was imagined to be an opening into the heavens. 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 29 

wisdom, sent by Here (Juno) Queen of Heaven to check 
this fatal strife between her favourite Greeks. The 
celestial messenger is visible to Achilles alone. She 
calms the hero's wrath so far as to restrain him from 
any act of violence ; but, as she disappears, he turns 
on his enemy, and swears a mighty oath — the royal 
oath of kings — by the golden-studded staff, or ' l scep- 
tre," which was borne by king, priest, and judge as the 
emblem of their authority. Pope's rendering has all 
the fire of the original, and the additional touches 
which he throws in are at least in a kindred spirit : — 

" By this I swear, when "bleeding Greece again 
Shall call Achilles, she shall call in vain : 
When flushed with slaughter Hector comes to spread 
The purpled shore with mountains of the dead, 
Then shalt thou mourn th' affront thy madness gave, 
Forced to deplore, when impotent to save ; 
Then rage in bitterness of soul, to know 
This act has made the bravest Greek thy foe." 

He dashes his sceptre on the ground, and sits down in 
savage silence. Agamemnon is ready enough to re- 
turn the taunt, when there rises in the assembly a 
venerable figure, whose grey hairs and tried sagacity 
in council command at once the respect of all. It is 
]STestor, the hoary-headed chieftain of the rocky Pylos 
in the Peloponnese — known in his more vigorous days 
as " the horse-tamer," and, in sooth, not a little proud 
of his past exploits. Two generations of men he has 
already outlived in his own dominions, and is now 
loved and respected by the third. He has joined the 
great armament still sound in wind and limb ; but he 
is valued now not so much for his 

" Red hand in the foray," 



30 THE ILIAD. 

as for his 

" Sage counsel in cumber." 

He can clothe this counsel, too, in winning words. 

The stream of eloquence that flowed from his lips, 

says the poet, was " sweeter than honey." He gently 

reproves both disputants for their unseemly strife — a 

shame to the Greeks, a triumph to the enemy. His 

words ring like the lament of David over the suicide 

of Saul — " Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the 

streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines 

rejoice." 

" Alas, deep sorrow on our land doth fall ! 
Yet shall on Priam and his sons alight 
Hope, and a great joy on the Trojans all, 
Hearing ye waste in hitter feud your might, 
Ye twain, our best in counsel and in fight." (W.) 

He proceeds to tell them something of his own long 

experience, by way of claim on their attention — with 

something also, as critics have noticed, of an old man's 

garrulity. Eut the reader, it should be remembered, 

really wants to know something about him, even if the 

Greeks may have been supposed to have heard his 

story before. 

" In times past 
I lived with men — and they despised me not — 
Abler in counsel, greater than yourselves. 
Such men I never saw and ne'er shall see, 
As Pirithous and Dryas, wise and brave, 
And Theseus, CEgeus' more than mortal son. 
The mightiest they among the sons of men, 
The mightiest they, and of the forest beasts 
Strove with the mightiest, and their rage subdued. 
With them I played my part ; with them, not one 
Would dare to fight of mortals now on earth. 
Yet they my counsels heard, my voice obeyed ; 
And hear ye also — for my words are wise." (D.) 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 31 

The angry chiefs do hear hira so far, that after the 
interchange of a few more passionate words they leave 
the conncil. Achilles stalks off gloomily to his tent, 
accompanied by his faithful friend and henchman, 
Patroclus (of whom we shall hear more), and followed 
by his retinue. Agamemnon proceeds at once to carry 
out his resolution. He despatches a galley with a 
trusty crew, under the command of the sage Ulysses, 
to the island of Chrysa, to restore the old priest's 
daughter to him in all honour, with expiatory presents, 
and the offer of a hecatomb to the Sun-god. They 
make the voyage quickly, and arrive safely at the 
island. The rapid movement here of Homer's verse 
has rarely been more happily rendered than in the 
English hexameters of Mr Landon : — 

" Out were the anchors cast, and the ropes made fast to the 
steerage ; 
Out did the sailors leap on the foaming beach of the ocean ; 
Out was the hecatomb led for the skilful marksman Apollo ; 
Out Chryseis arose from the ship that sped through the waters. " 

So, by the good priest's prayers, the god is propiti- 
ated, and the plague in the Greek host is stayed. 

Meanwhile another embassy, on a very different 
errand, has been despatched by the King of Men to 
the tents where Achilles lies, hard by his ships, with 
his fierce bands of Myrmidons encamped around him. 
Their name has passed into a by-word, being commonly 
but incorrectly used to designate an unscrupulous rab- 
ble of followers, to whom their leader's word is law. 
The notion must be derived not from Homer, but from 
Pope. In his version of the quarrel between Agamem- 
non and Achilles, he makes the former say to his an- 
tagonist — 



IH^M 



32 THE ILIAD. 

" Go, threat thine earth-born Myrmidons ; but here 
'Tis mine to threaten, prince, and thine to fear." 

But to suppose that tlie Myrmidons were subservient 
to any man's threats, is to give them a very different 
character from what we find in Homer. Even the 
epithet " earth-born," which is Pope's, not Homer's, 
and which may easily be misunderstood, they would 
have prized as a high compliment, implying that they 
were no new race, but the aboriginal possessors of their 
native soil ; just as the proud Athenians wore the 
" golden grasshopper" in their hair, because that insect 
was fabled to owe its birth to the spontaneous action 
of the earth. The followers of Achilles were indeed 
"fierce as ravening wolves," as the poet has afterwards 
described them ; but they were the very flower of the 
Greek army, troops of whom any leader might be 
proud, and if they had a wolfish thirst for blood, they 
were no worse and no better in this respect than Achilles 
himself, or any captain in the host before Troy ; for an 
insatiable ferocity, when once the spirit of combative- 
ness is aroused, is the characteristic of all Homer's 
heroes, as in those of the medieval romances. 

The purpose of the king's embassy to Achilles is, of 
course, in pursuance of his threat, to demand the sur- 
render of the fair Eriseis. Such a message to such a 
man is no very safe or agreeable errand. But Aga- 
memnon chooses his envoys well. He sends two her- 
alds — Eurybates and Talthybius. The herald's office, 
in early Greek warfare, had an especial sanctity. Those 
who held it were not mere officials whose name pro- 
tected them, but men of noble and even of royal birth, 
who might have been captains of thousands themselves, 
if they had not chosen, as it were, the civilian's place 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 33 

in warfare. Such diplomacy as there was room for in 
those ages was transacted by them. They were under 
the special protection of Zeus, as the god of oaths and 
treaties. There was no fear that the noble chief of 
the Myrmidons, even in his most furious mood, would 
treat such envoys rudely. But in fact his reception of 
them is one of the most remarkable scenes in the poem, 
both from its high-toned courtesy and from its strong 
contrast with the hero's previous bearing towards Aga- 
memnon. Achilles receives the heralds of the king 
much as a well-bred gentleman of fifty years ago would 
have received the " friend " who carried a hostile mes- 
sage from one with whom he had a deadly quarrel a few 
hours before. The demand which they brought from 
Agamemnon was pointed with the additional threat 
that, if he refused to give up the damsel, the king 
would come himself and carry her off by the strong 
hand, — a threat almost brutal, because quite unwar- 
ranted; since Achilles had declared in the council that 
if the Greeks, who had awarded her as his battle-prize, 
chose to acquiesce in the injustice of demanding her 
back from him, he should make no resistance. But 
it does not seem that the heralds delivered themselves 
of the additional insult which they were charged to 
convey. They had no need. As they stand at the 
entrance of his tent, "troubled and awe-stricken," loath 
to begin their unwelcome tale, Achilles sets them at 
their ease at once in a few calm and dignified words. 
He recognises in them "the messengers of Zeus" — and 
if now by accident of Agamemnon, the offence is his, 
not theirs. He at once bids Patroclus lead forth the 
damsel, and gives her into their custody, to deal with 
according to their orders. He repeats his oath, how- 
c 



34 THE ILIAD. 

ever, though, m calmer terms ; and calls them to wit- 
ness before heaven that Agamemnon, in his day of 
need, shall look in vain for the saving arm of the man 
he has insulted. 

It is something in favour of a tender side to the 
hero's character, that the " fair-cheeked " Briseis, spoil 
of war though she was, parts from him very reluc- 
tantly. Achilles, for his share, fairly weeps : but not 
the most romantic reader of the story dares nurse the 
idea that it is for his Briseis. They who bring with 
them, to the pages of classical fiction, a taste which 
has been built up by modern song and romance, must 
be warned at once that there is no love-story in either 
Iliad or Odyssey. Indeed, one remarkable point of 
difference between the imaginative writers of antiquity 
and those of our own days, lies in the absence of that 
which is the motive and the key-note of five-sixths of 
our modern tales in prose and verse. Love between 
unmarried persons, in the sense in which we commonly 
use the word, seems very much the product of modern 
civilisation. There is indeed a passion which we name 
by the same English word — the mere animal passion, 
which Homer, to do him justice, deals with but as a 
matter of fact, and never paints in attractive colours. 
There is again a love of another kind — the love of the 
husband for his wife and of the wife for her husband 
— which the old poet also well understood, and which 
furnishes him with scenes of the highest pathos and 
beauty. But as to the sentiment which forms the 
common staple of modern romance and drama, Homer 
certainly did not know what it meant, nor Achilles or 
Briseis either. As for the latter, if she shed tears, it 
was no doubt because she had found in Achilles a 



j 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES, 35 

kind and generous lord and master, who had made her 
captive lot (which might chance to come to the turn of 
any lady or princess in those warlike times) as toler- 
able as such a life could he ; and because Agamemnon 
— if she had heard his character from Achilles — did 
not promise a very favourable change in that respect. 

Achilles weeps — but not for Briseis. He is touched 
in a point where he is far more sensitive — his honour. 
Hehas been robbed of the guerdon of valour, bestowed on 
him in full conclave of the chiefs of the army. He has 
been robbed of it by Agamemnon — the man for whose 
especial sake, to avenge whose family wrongs, he has 
come on this long expedition from his home. This was 
his indignant protest in their dispute at the council — 

1 ( Well dost thou know that 'twas no feud of mine 
With Troy's brave sons, that brought me here in arms ; 
They never did me wrong ; they never drove 
My cattle, or my horses ; never sought 
In Phthia's fertile life-sustaining fields 
To waste the crops ; for wide between us lay 
The shadowy mountains and the roaring sea. 
With thee, void of shame ! with thee we sailed, 
For Menelaus and for thee, ingrate, 
Glory and fame on Trojan crests to win." (D.) 

And now this is his reward ! And the whole Greek 
army, too, have made themselves partakers in the 
wrong, inasmuch as they have tamely looked on, and 
allowed the haughty king thus to override honour, 
gratitude, and justice. His indignation is intense. He 
wanders away, and sits alone on the sea-beach, "gazing 
vacantly on the illimitable ocean." Soon there comes 
a change upon his spirit ; and now, with a childlike 
petulance — these Homeric heroes, with all their fierce 
ways, are still so very childlike, and therefore so human 



36 THE ILIAD. 

and so interesting — lie cries to his mother. True, that 
mother is, as we remember, a goddess — Thetis, daughter 
of the great Jupiter, and of potent influence in the waters 
."beneath the earth. To her he bemoans himself. That 
his days were to be few, he knew when he came here 
to Troy ; but she had promised him undying renown. 
It has failed him : his " one crowded hour of glorious 
life " is darkened in dishonour. He cries, and his god- 
dess-mother hears him — 

'•'Beside lier aged father where she sat, 
In the deep ocean-caves." 

It is the original of our own Milton's beautiful invoca- 
tion in Comus — the rough simple outline on which he 
has painted with a grace and fulness which make it 
all his own — 

"Sabrina fair ! 

Listen, where thou art sitting 
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, 

In twisted braids of lilies knitting 
The loose train of thy amber- dropping hair ; 
Listen for dear honour's sake, 
Goddess of the silver lake, 

Listen, and save ! " 

Thetis hears, and rises on the sea — "like as it were a 
mist " — (the " White Lady of Avenel ") caresses him 
soothingly with her hand, as though the stalwart war- 
rior were still a child indeed, and asks him the simple 
question which all mothers, goddesses or not, would 
put into much the same words — " My son, why weep- 
est thou?" He tells his tale of wrong; and she pro- 
ceeds to give him, in the first place, advice certainly not 
wiser than that of some earthly mothers. She does 
not advise him to make up his quarrel with Agamem- 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 37 

non, but to nurse his wrath, and withdraw himself 
wholly from the siege. She, meanwhile, will in- 
tercede with Jupiter, and beseech him to grant the 
Trojans victory for a while, that so the Greeks may 
learn to feel the loss of the hero whom they have 
insulted. 

There is an obstacle, however, in the way of the 
immediate performance of her promise — a ludicrous 
obstacle, to our modern taste, though the poet does 
not so intend it. The King of the Gods has gone out 
to dinner — or rather to a continuous festival of twelve 
days, to which he has been invited by "the blameless 
Ethiopians ; " * a race with whom the Immortals of 
Olympus have some mysterious connection, which has 
been held to imply an Eastern origin for the Greek reli- 
gion and race. With the dawn of the twelfth morning, 
however, Thetis presents herself in the " brazen-floored'' 
halls of Jupiter, and we are introduced to the Olympian 
court and household. A strange picture it is — such a 
travesty of a divine life as makes us wonder what the 
poet himself really conceived of the gods of his adop- 
tion. The life of mortal heroes in the world below 
is grandeur and nobleness itself compared with that 
of the Olympian heaven. Its pleasures indeed are 
much the same — those of sensual gratification ; the 
feast, the wine-cup, music and song, are what gods 
and goddesses delight in as much as those whom the 
poet pathetically calls " the creatures of a day." But 
all their passions are incomparably meaner. The wrath 

MVhy specially "blameless ? " has been sometimes asked. 

The author of the 'Mill on the Floss' suggests that it was 

because they lived so far off that they had no neighbours to 
criticise them. 



38 TEE ILIAD. 

of Achilles is dignified — Juno's anger against Troy is 
mere vicious spite. The subtle craft of Ulysses is at 
least exercised for the benefit of his countrymen and 
their cause ; but the shifty counsels of Jupiter are the 
mere expedients of a cunning despot who, between 
queen and ministers and favourites, finds it difficult, 
in spite of his despotism, to have his own way. The 
quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles is tragedy : 
the domestic wrangles of the Thunderer and his queen 
are in the very spirit of low comedy, and not even the 
burlesques of Life in Olympus, which some years ago 
were popular on our English stage, went far beyond 
the recognised legends of mythology. In fact, the 
comic element, what little there is of it in the Iliad, 
is supplied (with the single exception of the incident 
of Thersites) by the powers whom the poet recognises 
as divinities. The idea of rival wills and influences 
existing in the supernatural world led the poet neces- 
sarily to represent his gods as quarrelling ; and quarrels 
in a primitive age are perhaps hardly compatible with 
dignity. But the conception of gods in human shape 
has always a tendency to monstrosities and caricature. 
How close, too, the supernatural and the grotesque 
seem to lie together may be seen even in the existing 
sculptures and carvings of ancient Christendom, and 
still more remarkably in the old Miracle-Plays, which 
mix buffoonery with the most sacred subjects in a man- 
ner which it is hard to reconcile with any real feeling 
of reverence. 

Thetis throws herself at the feet of her father Jupi- 
ter, and begs of him, as a personal favour, the tempor- 
ary humiliation of Agamemnon and his Greeks. For 
a while the Thunderer is silent, and hesitates ; Thetis 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 39 

perseveringly clings to his knees. At last he confides 
to her his dread lest a compliance with her petition 
should involve him in domestic difficulties. 

iC Sad work thou mak'st, in bidding me oppose 
My will to Juno's, when her bitter words 
Assail me, for full oft amid the gods 
She taunts me that I aid the Trojan cause. 
But thou return — that Juno' J see thee not — 
And leave to me the furtherance of thy suit." (D.) 

He pledges his promise to her, and ratifies it with 
the mighty nod that shakes Olympus — a solemn con- 
firmation which made his word irrevocable. 

- " Waved on th' immortal head th' ambrosial locks, 
And all Olympus trembled at his nod. " 

Critics have somewhat over -praised the grandeur of 
the image ; but it is said that the great sculptor Phidias 
referred to it as having furnished him with the idea of 
his noble statue of Olympian Jove. Satisfied with her 
success, Thetis plunges down from high Olympus into 
the sea, and the Thunderer proceeds to take his place 
in full council of the gods, as calm as if nothing had 
happened. But there are watchful eyes about him 
which he has not escaped. Juno has been a witness 
of the interview, and has a shrewd suspicion of its 
object. A connubial dialogue ensues, which, though 
the poet has thought fit to transfer the scene of it to 
Olympus, is of an exceedingly earthly, and what we 
should now call " realistic," type. Homer's recognised 
translators have not condescended to give it the homely 
tone of the original. Pope is grandiloquent, and Lord 
Derby calmly dignified ; but Homer intends to be 
neither. Mr Gladstone's translation comes nearest the 



^■^^^■■■■^ 



40 THE ILIAD. 

spirit of the Greek. The brief encounter "between 
the king and queen of the Immortals is cut short by 
the former in rather summary fashion. " Thou hast 
been promising honour to Achilles, I trow," says Juno. 

" Zeus that rolls the clouds of heaven. her addressing answered then ; 

'iMoonstruck ! thou art ever trowing ; never I escape thy ken. 

After all, it boots thee nothing ; leaves thee of my heart the less : 

So thou hast the worser bargain. What if I the fact confess? 

It was done because I willed it. Hold thy peace — my word obey, 

Lest, if I come near, and on thee these unconquered hands I lay. 

All the gods that hold Olympus nought avail thee here to-day."' * 

He bids her, in very plain Greek, sit down and hold 

her tongue ; and gives her clearly to understand — with 

a threat of violence which is an unusual addition to 

his many failings as a husband — that it is his fixed 

intention, on this occasion, to be lord and master, not 

only of Olympus, but of his wife. Juno is silenced, 

and the whole assembly of the gods is startled by the 

Thunderer's violence. Vulcan, the fire-god — the lame 

brawny hunchback, always more or less the jester and 

the butt of the court of Olympus, but with more brains 

in his head than most of his straight-limbed compeers — 

Yulcan comes to the general relief. He soothes his 

royal mother by the argument, that it were ill indeed 

to break the peace of heaven for the sake of two or 

three wretched mortals : and he reminds her — we must 

suppose in an aside — that they both knew by bitter 

experience that when the father of gods and men did 

choose to put forth his might, it went hard with all 

who resisted. 

" When to thy succour once before I came, 
He seized me by the foot, and hurled me down 
From heaven's high threshold ; all the day I fell, 






Translations, 1863. 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 41 

And with the setting sun on Lemnos' isle 
Lighted, scarce half-alive ; there was I found, 
And by the Sintian people kindly nursed." (D.) 

He gives the mother-goddess further comfort — in "a 
double cup," which he proceeds also to hand round 
the whole of the august circle. They quaff their nectar 
with unusual zest, as they break into peals of laughter 
(it must be confessed, rather ungratefully) at the hob- 
bling gait and awkward attentions of their new cup- 
bearer : — 

' ' Thus they till sunset passed the festive hours ; 
Nor lacked the banquet aught to please the sense, 
Nor sound of tuneful lyre by Phoebus touched, 
Nor Muses' voice, who in alternate strains 
Responsive sung ; but when the sun had set 
Each to his home departed, where for each 
The crippled Vulcan, matchless architect, 
With wondrous skill a noble house had reared." 

And so, at the end of the first book of the poem, the 
curtain falls on the Olympian happy family. 

But Jupiter has but a wakeful night. He is plan- 
ning how he may best carry out his promise to Thetis. 
He sends a lying spirit in a dream to Agamemnon at 
midnight. The vision stands at the head of the king's 
couch, taking the shape of old Nestor. In this char- 
acter it encourages him to muster all his forces to 
storm the city of Troy on the morrow. Now, at last, 
the false phantom assures him, its walls are doomed 
to fall ; the strife in heaven is ended \ Juno's coun- 
sels have prevailed, and the fate of Troy is sealed 
irrevocably. 

Joyfully the King of Men arises from his sleep, and 
summons at daybreak a council of the chiefs. Already, 
says the poet, he storms and sacks the royal city in 



42 THE ILIAD. 

imagination, little foreseeing the long and bloody 
struggle that lies yet between him and his prey. In 
the council he invents a stratagem of his own, which 
complicates the story considerably without improving 
it. He suspects the temper of his army ; and before 
he makes up his mind to lead them to the assault, he 
seeks to ascertain whether or no the long ten years' 
siege has worn out their patience and broken their 
spirit. He will try the dangerous experiment of pro- 
posing to them to break up the siege and embark at 
once for home. He himself will make the proposal to 
the whole army ; the other leaders, for their part, are 
to oppose such a base retreat, and urge their followers 
to make yet another effort for the national honour of 
Greece. 

The clans, at the summons of their several chiefs, 
muster in their thousands from tents and ships; and 
Agamemnon, seated on his throne of state, the im- 
mortal sceptre in his hand, harangues them in accord- 
ance with his preconcerted stratagem. He paints in 
lively colours the weariness of the nine years' siege, his 
own disappointed hopes, the painful yearning of their 
long-deserted wives and children for the return of then 
husbands and fathers ; and ends by proposing an im- 
mediate re-embarkation for home. He plays his part 
only too successfully. The immense host heaves and 
sways with excitement at his words — " like the long 
waves of the Icarian Sea, like the deep tall corn-crop 
as the summer wind sweeps over it" — and with tumul- 
tuous shouts of exultation they rush down to their 
galleys and begin at once to launch them; so little 
regard have the multitude for glory, so strong is their 
yearning for home. It is possible that the poet is no 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 43 

unconscious satirist, and that he willingly allowed his 
hearers to draw, if they pleased, the inference which 
he hints in more than one passage, that war is the 
sport of princes, for which the masses pay the cost. 

But Juno's ever-watchful eyes have marked the move- 
ment. Again Minerva is her messenger, and shoots 
down from Olympus to stop this disgraceful flight. 
She addresses herself to the ear of the sage Ulysses, 
who knows her voice at once. Wisdom speaks to the 
wise, — if any reader prefers the moral allegory to the 
simple fiction. Ulysses is standing fixed in disgust and 
despair at the cowardice of his countrymen. The god- 
dess bids him use all his eloquence to check their flight. 
Without a word he flings off his cloak,*- and meeting 
Agamemnon, receives the immortal sceptre from his 
hand, and armed with this staff of authority rushes 
down to the galleys. Any king or chieftain whom he 
encounters he hastily reminds of the secret understand- 
ing which had been the result of the previous council, 
and urges them, at least, to set a braver example. To the 
plebeian crowd he uses argument of another kind. He 
applies the royal sceptre to them in one of its primitive 
uses, as a rod of correction, and bids them wait for 
orders from their superiors. Easily swayed to either 
course, the crowd are awed into quiet by his energetic 
remonstrances. One popular orator alone lifts his 
well-known voice loudly in defiance. It is a certain 

* It may be satisfactory to a matter-of-fact reader to know 
that Eurybates, his attendant, takes care of it. The old Greek 
bard is much more particular on such points than modern novel- 
ists, who make even their heroines take sudden journeys with- 
out (apparently) having any chance of carrying with them so 
much as a sac-de-nuit. 



w^^a^^mmmm 



44 THE ILIAD. 

Thersites, of whom the poet gives a sketch, brief 
enough, but with so many marks of individuality, that 
we may be justified in looking at him as a character 
drawn from life. 

" The ugliest man was he who came to Troy, 
With squinting eyes and one distorted foot, 
His shoulders round, and buried in his breast 
His narrow head with scanty growth of hair. " 

His talent lies in speaking evil of dignities — a talent 
which, no doubt, he had found popular enough in 
some circles of camp society, though all the respectable 
Greeks, we are assured, are shocked at him. He 
launches out now with bitter virulence — in which 
there is nevertheless (as in most oratory of the kind) 
a certain amount of truth — against Agamemnon. He 
denounces his greed, his selfishness, his disregard of the 
sufferings of his troops, his late treatment of Achilles; 
they must all be cowards, he says, to obey such a 
leader — 

" Women of Greece ! I will not call ye men !" 

Why not sail home at once, and leave him, if he can, 
to take Troy with his own single hand ? 

The mutineer speaks in an evil hour for himself, this 
time ; for Ulysses hears him. That energetic chief 
answers him in terms as strong as his own, and warns 
him that if he should catch him again railing in like 
fashion — " taking the name of kings in his abusive 
mouth" — he will strip his garments from him, and flog 
him naked back to the ships. And, as an earnest of 
his promise, he lays the mighty sceptre heavily on 
his back and shoulders. Such prompt and vigorous 
chastisement meets the popular humour at once ; and as 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 45 

tlie hunchback writhes and howls under the blows, 
the fickle feelings of the Greeks break forth in peals of 
laughter. " Of the many good things Ulysses has done, 
this last" they swear, " is the best of all." 

Then, prompted still by the goddess of Wisdom, 
Ulysses harangues the reassembled troops. He reminds 
them of their plighted oath of service to Agamemnon, 
of the encouraging oracles of heaven, of the disgrace of 
returning home from an unaccomplished errand. With 
the art of a true orator, he sympathises with their late 
feelings — it is bitter for them all, indeed, to waste so 
many years on a foreign shore, far from home, and wife, 
and children ; but bitterest of all would it be 

"■ Long to remain, and bootless to return." 

The venerable Nestor speaks to the same effect; and 
Agamemnon himself closes the debate with a call to 
immediate battle. It is a right royal speech, far more 
worthy of a true " king of men" than his former philip- 
pics — moderate in his allusion to Achilles, spirited in 
his appeal to his warriors. 

" Come but new friendship, and our feud destroy, 
Then from the evil that is fixed and sealed 
Not one day's respite shall be left to Troy — 
But now to dinner, ere we take the field ; 
Let each his spear whet, and prepare his shield, 
Feed well the horses, and each chariot test, 
That we may fight it out till one side yield, 
Fight in sound harness, and not think of rest, 
Till the black night decide it as to Zeus seems best. 

" Then shall the horses in their foam be wet, 
While forward in the glittering car they strain ; 
Then shall the straps of the broad buckler sweat 
Round many a breast there battling in the plain ; 
Then shall the arm droop, hurling spears with pain : 



MH^M^^MM 



46 THE ILIAD. 

And whomsoever I behold at lair 
Here by the ships, and for the fight not fain, 
Small for that skulker is the hope, I swear, 
But that the dogs he fatten and the fowls of air." (W. ) 

He remembers, too, like a wise general, that a battle 
may "be lost by fighting on an empty stomach. So 
the oxen and the fatlings are slain, the choice pieces 
of the thighs and the fat are offered in sacrifice to the 
gods, and then the whole army feasts their fill. Aga- 
memnon holds a select banquet of six of the chief 
leaders — King Idomeneus of Crete, Nestor, Ajax the 
Greater and the Less, and Ulysses, "wise in council as 
Zeus." One guest comes uninvited — his brother Mene- 
laus. He is no dinner-loving intruder; he comes, as 
the poet simply tells us, " because he knew in his heart 
how many were his brother's cares and anxieties," — he 
might be of some use or support to him. Throughout 
the whole of the poem, the mutual affection borne by 
these two brothers is very remarkable, and unlike any 
type of the same relationship which exists in fiction. 
It is never put forward or specially dwelt upon, but 
comes out simply and naturally in every particular of 
their intercourse. 

A king and priest, like Abraham at Bethel, Aga- 
memnon stands by his burnt-offering, and lifts his 
prayer for victory to Jupiter, " most glorious and most 
great, who dwells in the clouds and thick darkness." 
But no favourable omen comes from heaven. The god, 
whether or no he accepts the offering, gives no sign. 
Nevertheless — we may suppose with a certain wilful- 
ness which is part of his character — Agamemnon pro- 
ceeds to set the battle in array; and the second book of 
the Iliad closes with the long muster-roll of the Greek 



QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES. 47 

clans under their respective kings or chiefs on the one 
side, and of the Trojans and their allies on the other, 
which in our introduction has already been partly an- 
ticipated.* The long list of chiefs, with their genea- 
logies and birthplaces, and the strength of their seve- 
ral contingents, was evidently composed with a view to 
recitation : and whatever may be its value as an au- 
thentic record, we can understand the interest with 
which a Greek audience would listen to a muster-roll 
which was to them what the Eoll of Battle Abbey was 
to the descendants of the Normans in England. If 
here and there, upon occasion, the wandering minstrel 
inserted in the text the name and lineage of some 
provincial hero on his own responsibility, the popular 
applause would assuredly be none the less. 

* Page 17. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE DUEL OF PARIS AXD MEXELAUS. 

The battle is set in array, " army against army." But 
there is a difference in the bearing of the opposed forces 
"which is very significant, and is probably a note of real 
character, not a mere stroke of the poet's art. The Tro- 
jan host, after the fashion of Asiatic warfare, modern as 
well as ancient, move forward to the combat with loud 
shouts and clashing of weapons. The poet compares 
their confused clamour to the noise of a flock of cranes 
on their annual migration. The Greeks, on the other 
hand, march in silence, with closed ranks, uttering 
no sound, but " breathing determination." So, when 
afterwards they actually close for action, not a sound 
is heard in their ranks but the voice of the leaders 
giving the word of command. " You would not 
think," says the poet, " that all that mighty host had 
tongues ; " while, in the mixed battalions of the enemy, 
whose allies are men of many lands and languages, 
there arises a noisy discordant clamour — " like as of 
bleating ewes that hear the cries of their lambs." 

But while the hostile forces yet await the signal for 
the battle, Paris springs forth alone from the Trojan 
ranks. "Godlike" he is in his beauty, and with the 



TEE DUEL OF PARIS AND MENELA US. 49 

love of personal adornment which befits his character, 
he wears a spotted leopard's hide upon his shoulders. 
Tennyson's portrait of him, though in a different 
scene, is thoroughly Homeric — 

"White-breasted like a star, 
Fronting the dawn he moved ; a leopard's skin 
Drooped from his shoulder, but his sunny hair 
Clustered about his temples like a god's. " 

Advancing with long strides in the space between the 
armies, he challenges the leaders of the Greeks, one 
and all, to meet him singly in mortal combat. Mene- 
laus hears the boast. " Like a hungry lion springing 
on his prey," he leaps full-armed from his chariot, 
exulting in the thought that now at last his personal 
vengeance shall be gratified. But conscience makes a 
coward of Paris. He starts back — " as a man that sees 
a serpent in his path " — the godlike visage grows pale, 
the knees tremble, and the Trojan champion draws 
back under the shelter of his friends from the gallant 
hero whom he has so bitterly wronged. The Eonian 
historian Livy — a poet in prose — had surely this pass- 
age in his mind when he described Sextus Tarquinius, 
the dishonourer of Lucretia, quailing, as no Eoman of 
his blood and rank would otherwise have quailed, when 
young Valerius dashes out from the Eoman lines to 
engage him. The moral teaching of the heathen poet 
on such points is far higher than that of the medieval 
romancers with whom he has so many points in common. 
Sir Tristram of Lyonnois has no such scruples of con- 
science in meeting King Mark. Lancelot, indeed, will 
not fight with Arthur; but the very nobility of character 
with which the unknown author of that striking im- 
personation has endowed him is in itself the highest 

D 



50 THE ILIAD. 

of all wrongs against morality, in that it steals the 
reader's sympathies for the wrong-doer instead of for 
the injured husband. Shakespeare, as is his wont, 
strikes the higher key. It is the consciousness of 
guilt which makes Macbeth half quail before Mac- 
duff— 

' ' Of all men else have I avoided thee : 
But get thee back — my soul is too much charged 
With blood of thine already. 
... I will not fight with thee." 

Paris withdraws into the Trojan ranks, and there en- 
counters Hector. As has been already said, the poet 
assumes at the outset, on the part of his audience, at 
least such knowledge of his dramatis joerso?ice as to 
make a formal introduction unnecessary. Hector is 
the noblest of all the sons of Priam, the shield and 
bulwark of his countrymen throughout the long years 
of the war. Achilles is the hero of the Iliad, and to 
him Homer assigns the palm of strength and valour ; 
but, as is not seldom the case in fiction, the author 
has painted the rival hero so well that our sympathies 
are at least as frequently found on his side. We almost 
share Juno's feelings against the Trojans when they 
are represented by Paris ; but when Hector comes into 
the field, our hearts half go over to the enemy. His 
character will be touched upon more fully hereafter : 
for the present, it must discover itself in the course of 
the story. He throws himself in the way of Paris in 
his cowardly retreat ; and in spite of the fraternal feel- 
ing which is so remarkably strong amongst Homer's 
heroes, — in Hector and his brothers almost as much as 
in Agamemnon and Menelaus, — shame and disgust at 
his present poltroonery now mingle themselves with a 



THE DUEL OF PARIS AND MENELAUS. 51 

righteous hatred of trie selfish, lust which has plunged 

his country into a bloody war — 

u Was it for this, or with, such heart as now, 
O'er the wide billows with a chosen band 
Thou sailedst, and with violated vow 
Didst bring thy fair wife from the Apian strand, 
Torn from the house of men of warlike hand, 
And a great sorrow for thy father's head, 
Troy town, and all the people of the land, 
By thine inhospitable offence hast bred, 
Thus for the enemy's sport, thine own confusion dread ? 

" Lo, now thou cowerest, and wilt not abide 
Fierce Menelaus — thou hadst known, I ween, 
Soon of what man thou hast the blooming bride ! 
Poor had the profit of thy harp then been, 
Vain Aphrodite's gifts, thy hair, thy mien, 
He mangling in the dust thy fallen brow. 
But there is no wrong to the Trojans keen, 
And they are lambs in spirit ; or else hadst thou 
'Worn, for thine evil works, a cloke of stone ere now." W. 

Paris has the grace to admit the justice of his 
brother's rebuke. Hector, he confesses, is far the 
better soldier ; only he pleads, with a self-complacency 
which he never loses, that grace of person, and a 
smooth tongue, and a taste for music, are nothing less 
than the gifts of the gods — that, in fact, it is not his 
fault that he is so irresistible. He ends, however, 
with an offer which is far more to Hector's mind. Let 
open lists be pitched in sight of both armies, and he 
will engage Menelaus in single combat ; Helen and her 
wealth shall be the prize of victory. 

It is a proposal at which Hector's heart rejoices. 
He checks at once the advancing line of the Trojans, 
and steps out himself to the front. The Greeks bend 
their bows at him, but Agamemnon understands his 
motions, and bids them hold their hands. It is a fair 



^MHHHi 



52 THE ILIAD. 

challenge which, the Trojan prince comes to make on 

behalf of Paris. Menelaus accepts it, in a few plain 

and gallant words — he is no orator : — 

" Hear now my answer ; in this quarrel I 
May claim the chiefest share ; and now I hope 
Trojans and Greeks may see the final close 
Of all the labours ye so long have borne, 
T' avenge my wrong at Paris' hand sustained. 
And of us two whiche'er is doomed to death, 
So let him die ! the rest depart in peace." (D.) 

A truce is agreed upon, to abide the result of this 
appeal of battle. A messenger from Olympus — Iris, 
goddess of the Eainbow — comes to warn Helen of 
the impending duel. And this introduces one of 
the most beautiful passages in the whole Iliad, to 
modern taste. Its sentiment and pathos are perfectly 
level and quiet ; but as a natural and life-like yet 
highly-wrought portrait of a scene in what we may call 
the social drama, it stands almost without equal or 
parallel in classical literature. * 

Helen — the fatal cause of the war, the object of such 
violent passions and such bitter taunts — is sitting 
pensively in the palace, of her royal father-in-law, 
writing her own miserable story. She is writing it — 
not in a three-volumed novel, as a lady who had a 
private history, more or less creditable, would write it 
now, but — in a golden tapestry, in which more laborious 
form it was in those days not unfrequent to write sen- 
sational biographies. Iris urges her to be present at 
the show. The whole reads like the tale of some 
medieval tournament, except that Helen herself is the 
prize of victory as well as the Queen of Beauty. At- 
tended by her maidens, she goes down to the place 
where the aged Priam, like the kings of the Old Testa- 






THE DUEL OF PARIS AND ME NE LA US. 53 

merit history, "sits in trie gate" surrounded "by the 
elders of his city. It is the " Scaean," or " left-hand " 
gate, which opens towards the camp of the enemy, and 
commands a view of their lines. We have had no 
word as yet of the marvellous beauty of Helen. There 
is no attempt to describe it throughout the whole of 
the poem. But here, in a few masterly touches, intro- 
duced in the simplest and most natural manner, Homer 
does more than describe it, when he tells us its effects. 
The old men break off their talk as the beautiful stran- 
ger draws near. They had seen her often enough 
before ; the fatal face and form must have been well 
known in the streets and palaces of Troy, however 
retired a life Helen might well have thought it becom- 
ing in her unhappy position to lead. But the fair 
vision comes upon their eyes with a new and ever- 
increasing enchantment. They say each to the other 
as they look upon her, "It is no blame to Greeks or 
Trojans to fight for such a woman — she is worth all the 
ten years of war ; still, let her embark and go home, 
lest we and our children suffer more for her." Even 
the earliest critics, when the finer shades of criticism 
were little understood, were forcibly struck with the 
art of the poet in selecting his witnesses for the defence. 
The Boman Quintilian had said nearly all that modern 
taste has since confirmed. He bids the reader mark 
who gives this testimony to Helen's charms. Not the 
infatuated Paris, who has set his own honour and his 
country's welfare at nought for the sake of an unlawful 
passion; not some young Trojan, who might naturally be 
ready to vow " the world well lost " for such a woman; 
nor yet any of the vulgar crowd, easily impressed, and 
always extravagant in its praise or blame ; but these 



■■ 



54 THE ILIAD. 

grave and reverend seniors, men of cold passions and 
calm judgment, fathers whose sons were fighting and 
falling for this woman's sake, and even Priam himself, 
whose very crown and kingdom she had brought in 
deadly peril. He receives her, as she draws near, with 
gentle courtesy. Plainly, in his estimation, her un- 
happy position does not involve necessarily shame or 
disgrace. This opens one of the difficult questions ot 
the moral doctrine of the Iliad, which can only be 
understood by bearing in mind the supernatural ma- 
chinery of the poem. To the modern reader, the 
character of Helen, and the light in which she is 
regarded alike by Greeks and Trojans, present an 
anomaly in morals which is highly unsatisfactory. It 
is not as if Homer, like the worst writers of the Italian 
school, set marriage vows at nought, and made a jest 
of unchastity. Par otherwise ; the heathen bard on 
such points took an infinitely higher tone than many 
so-called Christian poets. The difficulty lies in the 
fact that throughout the poem, while the crime is 
reprobated, the criminal meets with forbearance, and 
even sympathy. Our first natural impulse with regard 
to Helen is to look upon her much in the light in 
which she herself, in one of her bitter confessions, says 
she is looked upon by the mass of the Trojans : — 

" Throughout wide Troy I see no friendly eye, 
And Trojans shudder as I pass them by." 

But this feeling, we must remember, arose much more 
from her being the cause of all the miseries of the 
siege, than from her having left her Greek husband. 
Priam and Hector — who have certainly not a lower 
morality, and a higher nobility and unselfishness, than 



TEE DUEL OF PARIS AND MEXELACS. 55 

tlie mass of their countrymen — show no such feeling 
against her ; on the contrary, they treat her with 
scrupulous delicacy and consideration. So also the 
leaders of the Greek forces betray no consciousness 
that they are fighting, after all, for a worthless woman; 
rather, she is a prize to he reclaimed, and Menelaus 
himself is ready from the first to receive her back 
again. How is this ? Some have understood the poet 
to represent her abduction from her home to have been 
forcible — that she was carried off by Paris entirely 
against her will • but even allowing this (which is not 
consistent with many passages in the poem), it would 
not excuse or palliate her voluntary acceptance of such 
a degraded position throughout the subsequent story. 
The real explanation is given in a few words by Priam 
in the scene before us. 

" Not thee I blame, 
But to the gods I owe this woful war. " 

In Homer's sight, as in Priam's, she is the victim of 
Yenus. She is "the victim of passion," only in a 
more literal and personal sense than we use the ex- 
pression. Love, lawful or unlawful, was a divine — 
that is, a supernatural — force, to the mind of the poet. 
The spells of Venus are irresistible : that fatal gift of 
beauty is the right by which the goddess takes pos- 
session of her, and leads her captive at her evil will. 
Helen herself feels her own degradation far more deeply, 
in fact, than any one else seems to feel it ; no one uses 
any expressions about her half so bitter as those which 
she applies to herself; " shameless," "bringer of sor- 
row," " whose name shall be a by-word and a reproach," 
are the terms she uses — 



56 TEE ILIAD. 

" Oh that the day my mother gave me birth, 
Some storm had on the mountains cast me forth ! " 

We must judge Homer's characters with reference to 
the light of his religious creed — if creed it were — or at 
least with reference to the supernatural element em- 
ployed in the Iliad. We shall be safe, then, in seeing 
Helen through Homer's eyes. We separate her uncon- 
sciously, as he does, from her fault. Look upon that as 
the poet does, as she does herself, as Priam and Hector 
and Menelaus do, as her fate, her misfortune, the weird 
that she has been doomed to dree, — and then, what 
a graceful womanly character remains ! Gentle and 
daughterlike to the aged Priam, humble and tearful in 
the presence of her noble and generous brother-in-law 
Hector, as disdainful as she dares to be to her ignoble 
lord and lover, ^tender, respectful, regretful, towards 
the gallant husband she has deserted. 

So she comes in all her grace and beauty, and takes 
her seat by the old King's side upon the watch-tower, 
looking out upon the camp of the Greeks. He bids 
her tell him the names of such of the kings and chiefs 
as she can recognise. One there is who seems indeed 
a " king of men," by the grace of nature. There are 
taller warriors in the host ; but none of such majestic 
mien and right royal bearing. It is, indeed, Agamem- 
non the son of Atreus, as Helen informs him, — 

" Wide-reigning, mighty monarch, ruler good, 
And valiant warrior ; in my husband's name, 
Lost as I am, I called him brother once." 

Another chief attracts Priam's attention, as he strides 
along in front of the lines. Less in stature than 
Agamemnon, he is broader in the chest and shoulders. 
Helen knows him well. It is Ulysses, son of Laertes, 



THE DUEL OF PARIS AND MENELA US. 57 

" the man of many wiles \ " nursed among the rugged 
cliffs of his island kingdom of Ithaca, but already a 
traveller well versed in the ways of men, the strata- 
gems of war, and the counsels of princes. He is recog- 
nised, too, now that Helen names him, by some of the 
Trojan elders ; for he, it must be remembered (and 
Homer assumes that we know it), had accompanied 
Menelaus in the embassy to demand Helen's restitu- 
tion. Old Antenor, now sitting by Priam's side, well 
remembers the remarkable stranger, whom he had 
lodged and entertained as a public guest. The picture 
he draws of him is one of the most graphic and indi- 
vidual of all Homer's characters. 

" For hither when on thine account to treat, 
Brave Menelaus and Ulysses came, 
I lodged them in my house, and loved them "both, 
And studied well the form and mind of each. 
As they with Trojans mixed in social guise, 
When both were standing, o'er his comrade high 
With broad-set shoulders Menelaus stood : 
Seated, Ulysses was the nobler form : 
Then, in the great assembly, when to all 
Their public speech and argument they framed, 
In fluent language Menelaus spoke, 
In words though few, yet clear ; though young in years, 
No wordy babbler, wasteful of his speech : 
But when the skilled Ulysses rose to speak, 
With downcast visage would he stand, his eyes 
Bent on the ground ; the staff he bore, nor back 
He waved, nor forward, but like one untaught, 
He held it motionless ; who only saw, 
Would say that he was mad, or void of sense : 
But when his chest its deep-toned voice sent forth, 
With words that fell like flakes of wintry snow, 
No mortal with Ulysses could compare ; 
Then, little recked we of his outward show." (D.) 

A third hero catches the eye of the Trojan king, as 



58 TEE ILIAD. 

well lie may — a leader like Saul, " taller by the head 
and shoulders than the rest of the people" — and he asks 
Helen to name him also. This is Ajax of Crete, son of 
Telamon, a giant chieftain, "the bulwark of the Greeks," 
represented here in the Iliad as easy-tempered and 
somewhat heavy, as it is the wont of giants to be, de- 
graded by medieval and modern poets into a mere bulk 
without brains. " Mars' idiot," Shakespeare calls him, 
" who has not so much wit as would stop the eye of 
Helen's needle." Shirley, in his ' Ajax and Ulysses,' 
carries out the same popular notion : — 

'' And now I look on Ajax Telamon, 
I may compare him to some spacious building ; 
His body holds vast rooms of entertainment, 
And lower parts maintain the offices ; 
Only the garret, his exalted head, 
Useless for wise receipt, is filled with lumber." 

By the side of Ajax Helen also marks King Ido- 
meneus of Crete, a frequent guest in the palace of 
Menelaus in happier times ; for the court of Sparta, as 
will be seen hereafter in the Odyssey, was in these 
heroic days a centre of civilisation and refinement. 
Two chiefs Helen's anxious eyes vainly try to discern 
amongst the crowd of her countrymen, — 

" My own two brethren, and my mother's sons, 
Castor and Pollux ; Castor, horseman bold, 
Pollux, unmatched in pugilistic skill ; 
In Lacedaamon have they stayed behind ? 
Or can it be, in ocean-going ships 
That they have come indeed, but shame to join 
The fight of warriors, fearful of the shame 
And deep disgrace that on my name attend ? " (D.) 

Helen's self-reproachful surmises have not reached 
the truth. The " Great Twin Brethren," who had once 



THE DUEL OF PARIS AND MEN EL A US. 59 

already (so the ancient legend said) rescued their 
beautiful sister in her girlhood from the hands of 
Theseus, who had been amongst the mighty hunters of 
the Calydonian boar, and had formed part of the ad- 
venturous crew of the Argo, had finished their mortal 
warfare years before in a raid in M essenia ; but to re- 
appear as demigods in Greek and Eoman legend, — the 
spirit horsemen who rallied the Eoman line in the 
great fight with the Latins at the Lake Regillus, the 
" shining stars " who lighted the sailors on the stormy 
Adriatic, and gave their names to the ship in which 
St Paul was cast away. 

" Back comes the chief in triumph. 

Who, in the hour of fight, 
Hath seen the Great Twin Brethren 

In harness on his right. 
Safe conies the ship to harbour, 

Through "billows and through gales, 
If once the Great Twin Brethren 

Sit shining on the sails." * 

This picturesque dialogue between Priam and his 
fascinating guest is interrupted far too soon for the 
reader's complete enjoyment — somewhat too abruptly, 
indeed, for its perfection. One would like to have 
heard Helen's estimate of the other leaders of the 
Greeks; of Diomed, of the lesser Ajax, of Nestor, of 
Mnestheus the Athenian ; and it is hardly possible not 
to fancy that the scene has been left by the poet in- 
complete, or that some portion has been lost past 
recovery. The tragedian ^Eschylus, who was full of 
the true Homeric spirit, carried out the idea to what 
seems its natural completion in a remarkable scene of 
• The Seven Chiefs against Thebes/ to which we may 

* Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. 



60 THE ILIAD. 

hope to introduce our readers more fully hereafter. 
Euripides, in his ' Phcenissa?/ adopts the very same 
machinery; and Tasso has also imitated the scene in 
his ' Jerusalem Delivered/ * where he brings Erminia 
on the walls, pointing out to King Aladine the persons 
of the most renowned of the besieging knights. 

The interruption is as little satisfactory to Priam as 
to the reader. A herald summons the king of Troy to 
a conference in the mid-space between the city walls 
and the enemy's leaguer, in order to ratify the armistice, 
while Paris and Menelaus decide their quarrel in single 
combat. The old man mounts his chariot, " shudder- 
ing," as foreboding the defeat and death of his son. 
Agamemnon and Ulysses on the one side, Priam and 
Antenor on the other, duly slay the sacrificial lambs, 
and make joint appeal to Jupiter, the Avenger of 
oaths, pouring the red wine upon the earth with solemn 
imprecation, that so may now forth the heart's blood of 
him who on either part shall break the truce. And the 
god listens as before, but does not accept the appeal. 
Priam withdraws, for he cannot bear to be a spectator 
of his son's peril. Hector and Ulysses, precisely in the 
fashion of the marshals in the tournaments of chivalry, 
measure out the lists ; the rest of the Greeks lie down 
on the ground beside their horses and chariots, while 
the lots are cast which shall first throw the spear. The 
chance falls to Paris. He throws, and strikes full and 
fair in the centre of Menelaus' round shield. But the 
seasoned bull's hide turns the point, and it does not 
penetrate. 2s~ext comes the turn of Menelaus. Paris 
has ventured no appeal to heaven ; but the Greek king 
lifts his voice in prayer to Jupiter for vengeance on 
* Book iii. st. 12. 



THE DUEL OF PARIS AND MENELAUS. 61 

the traitor who has so abused his hospitality, before he 
poises his long lance carefully and hurls it at his enemy. 
Eight through shield, breastplate, and linen vest goes 
the good Greek weapon ; but Paris leans back to avoid 
it, and it only grazes him. Menelaus rushes forward, 
sword in hand, and smites a downright blow on Paris' 
crest. But the Trojan helmet proves of better quality 
than the shield, and the Greek blade flies in shivers. 
Maddened by his double failure, he rushes on his 
enemy, and seizing him by the horse-hair crest, drags 
him off by main strength towards the ranks of the 
Greeks. But in this extremity the goddess of love 
comes to the rescue of her favourite. At her touch the 
tough bullhide strap of Paris' head-piece, which was all 
but choking him, breaks, and leaves the empty helmet 
in the hands of Menelaus. He hurls it amongst his 
comrades in disappointment and disgust, and rushes once 
more in pursuit of Paris. But Yenus has wrapt him 
in a mist, and carried him off; and while the son of 
Atreus rushes like a baffled lion up and down the lists 
in quest of him, while even the Trojans are aiding in 
the search, and no man among them would have hid- 
den him — for "they all hated him like black death" — 
he is safely laid by the goddess in Helen's chamber. 
The scene in which she receives him is, like all the 
rest of her story, a beautiful contradiction. Her first 
greeting is bitter enough. Either her heart has been 
indeed with Menelaus in the fight — or at least she 
would have had her present husband come back from 
the field, dead or alive, in some more honourable 
fashion — 

" Back from the battle ? Would thou there hadst died 
Beneath a warrior's arm whom once I called 



62 THE ILIAD. 

My husband ! Vainly didst thou boast erewhile 

Thine arm, thy dauntless courage, and thy spear, 

The warlike Menelaus should subdue ! 

Go now again, and challenge to the fight 

The warlike Menelaus. — Be thou ware ! 

I warn thee, pause, ere madly thou presume 

With fair-haired Menelaus to contend !" (D.) 

Brave words ! but still, as of old, the fatal spells of 
Venus are upon her, and Paris' misadventure in the 
lists is all too soon condoned. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE BROKEN TRUCE. 



The Greeks claim trie victory — reasonably, since the 
Trojan champion has fled the lists; but again the 
intrigues of the court of Olympus interfere to inter- 
rupt the course of mortal justice. The gods of Homer 
are not the gods of Epicurus' creed, who, as our English 
poet sings, "lie beside theirnectar, careless of mankind." 
They are anything but careless, so far as the affairs of 
mortals are concerned; but their interference is regu- 
lated by the most selfish motives. Men are the pup- 
pets whom they make to dance for their gratification — 
the counters with which they play their Olympian 
game, and try to defeat and checkmate each other. 
Even the respect which they pay to the mortal who is 
regular in the matter of offering sacrifices is entirely 
selfish — it seems to be merely the sensual appetite for 
fat roasts and rich savours. They are commonly in- 
fluenced by jealousy, pique, revenge, or favouritism ; 
and where they do punish the wrongdoer, it is far 

more often from a sense of lese-majeste a slight 

offered to some cause which is under their special pro- 
tection — than from any moral indignation at wrong 
itself. When the scene opens in the fourth book of 



64 THE ILIAD. 

the poem, it seems to pass at once from serious melo- 
drama to broad comedy ; and but that these dwellers 
in Olympus really rule the fortunes of the tale, it 
would be scarcely possible not to believe that the poet 
so intended it. 

We are introduced again, then, to Olympus ; and, as 
before, to a quarrel among the Immortals. It is Jove 
this time who is the aggressor. He has seen the result 
of the combat, and taunts Juno with the double pat- 
ronage extended to the Greeks by herself and Minerva 
— which, after all, has failed — while A 7 enus, more active 
and energetic, has rescued her favourite. However, he 
awards the victory to Menelaus ; and suggests, as a 
solution to all disputes and difficulties, that now Helen 
should be given up, the Greeks go home, and so the 
fate of Troy be averted. At the thought of her enemy 
thus escaping, the queen of the gods cannot contain 
her rage. Jupiter gives way. He loves Troy much, 
but domestic peace and quietness more. He warns his 
queen, however, that if he now consents to give up 
Troy to her insatiable revenge, she shall not stand in 
his way hereafter, in case some community of mortals 
who may be her especial favourites shall incur his 
royal displeasure. And Juno, with that utter indif- 
ference to human suffering, or human justice, which 
characterises the deities of Olympus, makes answer in 
these words : — ■ 

" Three cities there are dearest to my heart ; 
Argos, and Sparta, and the ample streets 
Of rich Mycenae ; work on them thy wiU — 
Destroy them, if thine anger they incur — 
I will not interpose nor hinder thee. " 

In furtherance of this strange compact, Minerva is 



THE BROKEN- TRUCE. 65 

once more sent down to the plains of Troy. Her 
mission now is to incite the Trojans to break the truce 
by some overt act, and thus not only renew the war, 
but put themselves plainly in the wrong. Clothing 
herself in the human shape of the son of old Antenor, 
she mingles in the Trojan ranks, and addresses herself 
to the cunning bowman Pandarus. His character in 
the Iliad has nothing in common with the " Sir Pan- 
darus of Troy," whose name, as the base uncle of Cres- 
sida, has passed into an unwholesome by-word, and 
whom Lydgate, Chaucer, and, lastly, Shakespeare, bor- 
rowed from the medieval romancers. Here he is but an 
archer of known skill, somewhat given to display, with 
his bow of polished ibex-horns tipped with gold, and 
vain of his reputation, whom the goddess easily tempts 
to end the long war at once by a timely shot, and win 
immortal renown by taking off Menelaus. With a 
brief prayer and a vow of a hecatomb to Apollo, the 
god of the bow — who is supposed to be as ready as the 
rest of the immortals to abet an act of treachery on such 
conditions — Pandarus ensconces himself behind the 
shields of his comrades, and choosing out his arrow 
with the same care which we read of in the great ex- 
ploits of more modern bowmen, he discharges it point- 
blank at the unsuspecting Menelaus. The shaft flies 
true enough, but Minerva is at hand to avert the 
actual peril from the Greek hero : she turns the arrow 
aside — 

" As when a mother from her infant's cheek, 
Wrapt in sweet slumbers, brushes off a fly." 

It is a pretty simile ; but the result is not so entirely 
harmless. The arrow strikes in the belt, and so meets 

E 



wmmmamm 



66 THE ILIAD. 

the double resistance of belt and corslet. It draws 
blood, nevertheless, in a stream ; and both Menelaus 
and Agamemnon at first fear that the wound is 
mortal ; — 

" Great Agamemnon shuddered as he saw 
The crimson blood-drops issuing from the wound, 
Shuddered the warlike Menelaus' self ; 
But when the sinew and the arrow-head 
He saw projecting, back his spirit came. 
Then, deeply groaning, Agamemnon spoke, 
As Menelaus by the hand he held, 
And with him groaned his comrades ; l Brother dear, 
Fatal to thee hath been the oath I swore, 
When thou stoodst forth alone for Greece to fight ; 
Wounded by Trojans, who their plighted troth 
Have trodden under foot.' " (D.) 

Two points are remarkable in this passage : first, the 
tenderness which Agamemnon shows towards his 
younger brother, even to the point of self-reproach at 
having allowed him to fight Paris at all, though in a 
quarrel which was so thoroughly his own. His ex- 
pressions of grief and remorse at the thought of going 
home to Greece without him (which run to consider- 
able length), though somewhat tinged with selfishness, 
inasmuch as he feels his own honour at stake, are much 
more like the feeling of a parent than of an elder brother. 
Again, the picture of Menelaus " shuddering " at his 
own wound —so sensitive to the dread of death that 
he apparently all but faints, until he is reassured by 
finding that the barb of the arrow has not really pene- 
trated — is utterly inconsistent with our English no- 
tions of a hero. We have to bear in mind, here and 
elsewhere, that these Greek heroes, of whatever race 
we are to suppose them to be, are of an entirely differ- 



THE BROKEN TRUCE. 67 

ent temperament to us cold and self-restrained northerns. 
They are highly sensitive to bodily pain, very much 
given to groans and tears, and very much afraid of 
death for themselves, however indifferent to human life 
in the case of others. Death, to these sensuous Greeks, 
was an object of dread and aversion, chiefly because it 
implied to their minds something like annihilation. 
However vivid in some passages of their poets is the 
description of those happy Elysian fields where the 
souls of heroes dwelt, the popular belief gave to the dis- 
embodied spirit but a shadowy and colourless existence. 
The wound is soon stanched by the aid of the 
skilful leech Machaon, son of iEsculapius (and there- 
fore grandson of Apollo " the Healer"), but who is 
a warrior and chieftain as well as the rest, though 
he has placed his skill at the service of Agamem- 
non. The King of Men himself, as soon as his brother's 
hurt is tended, rushes along the lines, rousing chiefs 
and clansmen to avenge the treachery of the enemy. 
Idomeneus of Crete, Ajax the Greater and the Less, 
Mnestheus of Athens, Ulysses, Diomed — to all in 
turn he makes his passionate appeal; to some, in lan- 
guage which they are inclined to resent, as implying 
that they were disinclined for the combat. Diomed 
and Sthenelus he even reminds of the brave deeds of 
their fathers Tydeus and Capaneus in the great siege 
of Thebes, and stings them with the taunt, that the sons 
will never win the like renown. Diomed hears in 
silence ; but the son of Capaneus inherits, with all the 
bravery, something of the insolence of the chief who 
swore that " with or without the gods " he would burn 
Thebes : he answers the great king in words which 
have yet a certain nobility in their self-assertion — 



■■■■■ 



68 TEE ILIAD. 

" Atrides, lie not, when thou know'st the truth ; 
We hold ourselves far better than our sires ; 
We took the strength of seven-gated Thebes, 
Though with a smaller host we stormed her towers, 
Strong in heaven's omens and the help of Jove ; 
For them — their own presumption was their fall." 

All the leaders of the Greeks eagerly marshal their 
forces at the King's call. Nestor's experienced counsel 
orders the line of battle — so well, that subsequent com- 
manders were fain to take a lesson from it. 

" In the front rank, with chariot and with horse, 
He placed the mounted warriors ; in the rear, 
Num'rous and brave, a cloud of infantry, 
Compactly massed, to stem the tide of war. 
Between the two he placed tk' inferior troops, 
That e'en against their will they needs must fight. 
The horsemen first he charged, and bade- them keep 
Their horses well in hand, nor wildly rush 
Amid the tumult : ' See,' he said, ' that none, 
In skill or valour over-confident, 
Advance before his comrades, nor alone 
Eetire ; for so your lines were easier forced ; 
But ranging each beside a hostile car, 
Thrust with your spears ; for such the better way ; 
By men so disciplined, in elder days, 
Were lofty walls and fenced towers destroyed.' " (D.) 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE FIRST DAY S BATTLE. 

As before, while tlie Greek line advances in perfect 
silence, the Trojans make their onset with loud shouts 
and a clamour of discordant war-cries in many tongues. 
Mars animates the Trojans, Minerva the Greeks; while 
Fear and Panic hover over the two armies, and Strife 
— whom the poet describes in words which are the 
very echo of Solomon's proverb — " The beginning of 
strife is as when one letteth out water " — 

" With humble crest at first, anon her head, 
While yet she treads the earth, affronts the skies." 

The two armies close in battle, only embittered by 
the broken truce. The description is a good specimen 
of the poet's powers, and Lord Derby's translation is 
sufficiently close : — 

" Then rose the mingled shouts and groans of men 
Slaying and slain ; the earth ran red with blood. 
As when descending from the mountain's brow 
Two wintry torrents from their copious source 
Pour downwards to the narrow pass, where meet 
Their mingled waters in some deep ravine, 
Their weight of flood, on the far mountain's side 
The shepherd hears the roar ; so loud arose 
The shouts and yells of those commingling hosts." * 



* There is a parallel, probably quite unconscious and there- 



70 TH.E ILIAD. 

Then begins one of those remarkable descriptions of 
a series of single combats between warriors of note on 
either side, in which Homer delights and excels. It 
must be confessed that they are somewhat wearisome to 
a modern reader ; although, as has been well observed, 
the details of attack and defence, wounds and death, 
are varied in a fashion which shows that the artist was 
thoroughly master of his work; and it is even said that 
in the physical results assigned to each particular 
wound he has shown no mean knowledge of anatomy. 
Still, the continuous catalogue of ghastly wounds and 
dying agonies is uncongenial with our more refined sym- 
pathies. But it was quite in harmony with the tastes 
of ruder days. We find the same apparent repetition 
of single combats in the medieval romances — notably 
in Mallory's King Arthur ; and they were probably not 
the least popular portions of the tale. Even a stronger 
parallel case might be found in the description of a 
prize-fight in the columns of sporting newspapers, not 
so many years ago, when each particular blow and its 
results, up to " Round 102," were graphically described 
in language quite as figurative, if not so poetic, as 
Homer's ; and found, we must suppose, a sufficient 
circle of readers to whom it was not only intelligible 
but highly interesting. The poet who recites — as we 
must suppose Homer to have done — must above every- 

fore a higher testimony to the truth of Homer's simile, in King- 
lake's vivid description of the charge of Scarlett's brigade on 
the Russian cavalry at Balaclava : " As heard on the edge of the 
Chersonese, a mile and a half towards the west, the collected 
roar which arose from this thicket of intermixed combatants 
had the unity of sound which belongs to the moan of a distant 
sea." — Kinglake's Crimea, iv. 174. 



THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE, 71 

thing else excite and interest his audience : his lay 
must he rich in incident ; and to an audience who were 
all more or less warlike, no incidents could he so ex- 
citing as the details of hattle. There is much savage- 
. ness in Homer's comhats ; hut savageness is to the taste 
of men whose only means of excitement is through 
their grosser senses, and a love of the horrihle in fact 
or fiction is hy no means extinct even in our own day. 
Young Antilochus, the son of Nestor's old age, 
draws the first "blood in the hattle. He kills Echepolus. 

" Beneath his horsehair plumed helmet's peak 

The sharp spear struck ; deep in his forehead fixed, 
It pierced the bone : then darkness veiled his eyes, 
And, like a tower, amid the press he fell." 

Over his dead "body the comhat grows furious — the 
Greeks endeavouring to drag him off to strip his ar- 
mour, the Trojans to prevent it. The armour of a 
vanquished enemy was, in these comhats, something 
like what an enemy's scalp is to the Indian " brave;" to 
carry it off in triumph, and hang it up in their own 
tents as a trophy, was the great amhition of the slayer 
and his friends. Ajax, too, slays his man — spearing 
him right through from "breast to shoulder : and the 
tall Trojan falls like a poplar — 

"Which with his biting axe the wheelwright fells. " 
Ulysses, roused hy the death of a friend who is killed 
in trying to carry off this last hody, rushes to the front, 
and poising his spear, looks round to choose his victim. 
The foremost of his enemies recoil ; but he drives his 
weapon right through the temples of Demophoon, a 
natural son of Priam, as he sits high in his chariot. 
The Trojans waver ; even Hector gives ground ; the 
Greeks cheer, and some carry off the bodies, while the 



72 THE ILIAD. 

rest press forward. It is going hard with. Troy, when 
Apollo, who sits watching the battle from the citadel, 
calls londly to their troops to remember that "there 
is no Achilles in the field to-day." So the fight is 
renewed, Minerva cheering on the Greeks, as Apollo 
does the Trojans. 

Diomed, the gallant son of Tydeus, now becomes the 
hero of the day. His exploits occupy, indeed, so large 
a portion of the next book of the poem, that it was 
known as "The Deeds of Diomed," and would form, 
according to one theory, a separate romance or lay 
of itself, exactly as some portions of the Arthurian 
romance have for their exclusive hero some one renowned 
Knight of the Bound Table, as Tristram or Lancelot. 
Diomed fights under supernatural colours. Minerva 
herself not only inspires him with indomitable courage, 
but sheds over his whole person a halo of celestial radi- 
ance before which the bravest Trojan might well recoil — 

" Forth from his helm and shield a fiery light 
There flashed, like autumn's star, that brightest shines 
"When newly risen from his ocean bath." 

Once more the prince of archers, Pandarus the Lycian, 
comes to the rescue of the discomfited Trojans. He 
bends his bow against Diomed, who is now fighting on 
foot, and the arrow flies true to its mark. He sees it 
strike deep into the shoulder, and the red blood streams 
out visibly over the breastplate. Elated by his success, 
he turns round and shouts his triumphant rallying-cry 
to the Trojans — "The bravest of the Greeks is wounded 
to the death ! " But his exultation is premature. 
Diomed gets him back to his chariot, and calls on his 
faithful friend and charioteer Sthenelus to draw the 
arrow from the wound. The blood wells out fast, as 



THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE. 73 

the "barb is withdrawn ; but the hero puts up a brief 
prayer to his guardian goddess for strength yet to 
avenge him of his adversary, whose exulting boast he 
has just heard. Minerva hears. By some rapid celes- 
tial pharmacy she heals the wound at once, and gives 
him fresh strength and vigour, adding these words of 
encouragement and warning : — 

" Go fearless onward, Diomed, to meet 
The Trojan hosts ; for I within thy breast 
Thy father's dauntless courage have infused, 
Such as of old in Tydeus' bosom dwelt, 
Bold horseman, buckler- clad ; and from thine eyes 
The film that dimmed them I have purged away/' 
That thou mayest well 'twixt gods and men discern. 
If then some god make trial of thy force, 
With other of the Immortals fight thou not ; 
But should Jove's daughter Venus dare the fray, 
Thou need'st not shun at her to cast thy spear." (D.) 

With redoubled vigour and fury the hero returns to 
the battle ; and again the Trojans' names, to each of 
which the poet contrives to give some touch of indivi- 
dual character, swell the list of his victims. iEneas 
marks his terrible career, and goes to seek for Pandarus. 
He points out to him the movements of the Greek 
champion, and bids him try upon his person the far- 
famed skill that had so nearly turned the fate of war 
in the case of Menelaus. Pandarus tells him of his 
late unsuccessful attempt, and declares his full belief 

* The idea is borrowed by Milton in a well-known passage ; — 

" To nobler sights 
Michael from Adam's eyes the film removed 
Which that false fruit, which promised clearer sight, 
Had bred ; then purged with euphrasy and rue 
The visual nerve, for he had much to see." 

— Par. Lost, xi. 411. 






74 TEE ILIAD. 

that some glamour of more than mortal power has made 
Diomed invulnerable to human weapons. He bitterly 
regrets, as he tells iEneas, that he did not follow the 
counsels of his father Lycaon, and bring with him to 
the campaign, like other chiefs of his rank, some of 
those noble ste'eds of whom eleven pair stand always 
in his father's stalls, " champing the white barley and 
the spelt." He had feared, in truth, that they might 
lack provender in the straits of the siege : — 

" Woe worth the day, when from the glittering wall, 
Hector to serve, I took my shafts and bow, 
And to fair Ilion, from my father's hall, 
Captain of men, did with my Lycians go ! 
If ever I return, if ever I know 
My country, my dear wife, my home again, 
Let me fall headless to an enemy's blow, 
Save the red blaze of lire these arms contain ! " (W.) 

iEneas bids him mount with him into his chariot, 
and together they will encounter this redoubtable Greek. 
Pandarus takes the spear and shield, while iEneas 
guides the horses. Diomed is still fighting on foot, 
when Sthenelus, who attends him with the chariot, 
sees the two hostile chiefs bearing down upon him. 
He begs his comrade to remount, and avoid the en- 
counter with two such adversaries. Diomed indig- 
nantly refuses. He will slay both, with the help of 
Heaven ; and he charges Sthenelus, if such should be 
the happy result, to leave his own horses and chariot, 
securing the reins carefully to the chariot-front, and 
make prize of the far-famed steeds of iEneas — they are 
descended from the immortal breed bestowed of old by 
Jupiter upon King Tros. So, on foot still, he awaits 
their , onset. Pandarus stands high in the chariot 



TEE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE. 75 

with poised weapon, and hails his enemy as he comes 
within hurling distance : — 

" Prince, thou art met ! though late in vain assailed, 
The spear may enter where the arrow failed. " 

It does enter, and piercing through the tough ox-hide 
of the shield, stands fixed in the breastplate. Again, 
with premature triumph, he shouts exultingly to Dio- 
med that at last he has got his death-wound. But 
the Greek quietly tells him that he has missed — which 
assuredly he himself is not going to do. He hurls his 
spear in turn with fatal aim : and the poet tells us 
with ghastly detail how it entered beneath the eyeball, 
and passed down through the "white teeth" and 
tongue — 

" Till the bright point looked out beneath the chin " — 
and Pandarus the Lycian closes his career, free at least 
from the baseness which medieval romances have at- 
tached to his name. 

iEneas, in obedience to the laws of heroic chivalry, 
at once leaps down from the chariot to defend against 
all comers the body of his fallen comrade. 

" And like a lion fearless in his strength 
Around the corpse he stalked this way and that, 
His spear and buckler round about him held, 
To all who dared approach him threat'ning death." 

Diomed in this case avails himself of a mode of attack 
not uncommon with Homers heroes. He seizes a huge 
stone — which not two men of this degenerate age (says 
Homer, with a poet's cynicism for the present) could 
have lifted — and hurls it at the Trojan prince. It strikes 
him on the hip, crushes the joint, and brings him to his 
knees. But that his goddess-mother Yenus comes to 
his rescue, the world had heard the last of iEneas, and 



76 THE ILIAD. 

Yirgil must hare sought another hero for his great 
poem. 

<c About her much-loved sou her arms she throws — 
Her arms, whose whiteness match the falling snows ; 
Screened from the foe behind her shining veil, 
The swords wave harmless and the javelins fail." (P.) 

Sthenelus, for his part, remembers the orders of his 
friend and chief, and drives off at once to the Greek 
camp with the much-coveted horses of ^neas. Dio- 
med rushes in pursuit of Venus — whom he knows, by 
his new gift of clear vision — as she carries off her son 
through the ranks of the Trojans. She, at least, of all 
the divinities of Olympus, had no business, thought 
the Greek, in the melee of battle. Besides, he had 
received from Minerva special permission to attack her. 
Most ungallantly, to our notions, he does so. The scene 
is such a curious one, that it is well to give Lord Derby's 
version of it : — 

" Her, searching through the crowd, at length he found, 
And springing forward, with his pointed spear 
A wound inflicted on her tender hand. 
Piercing tli ambrosial veil, the Graces' work, 
The sharp spear grazed her palm below the wrist. 
Forth from the wound th' immortal current flowed, 
Pure ichor, life-stream of the blessed Gods ; 
They eat no bread, they drink no ruddy wine, 
And bloodless thence and deathless they become. 
The goddess shrieked aloud, and dropped her son ; 
But in his arms Apollo bore him off 
In a thick cloud enveloped, lest some Greek 
Might pierce his breast, and rob him of his life. 
Loud shouted brave Tydides, as she fled : 
' Daughter of Jove, from battle-fields retire ; 
Enough for thee weak women to delude ; 
If war thou seek'st, the lesson thou shalt learn 
Shall cause thee shudder but to hear it named.' 
Thus he ; but ill at ease, and sorely pained, 



THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE. 77 

The Goddess fled : her, Iris, swift as wind, 
Caught up, and from the tumult bore away, 
Weeping with pain, her fair skin soiled with blood." 

It is the original of the grand passage in the ; Para- 
dise Lost,' in which the English poet has adopted 
almost literally the Homeric idea of suffering inflicted 
on an immortal essence, while carefully avoiding the 
ludicrous element in the scene. In the "battle of the 
Angels, Michael cleaves Satan down the right side : — 

" The griding sword with discontinuous wound 
Passed through him ; but th' ethereal substance closed, 
Not long divisible ; and from the gash 

rA stream of nectar'ous humour issuing flowed, 
Sanguine, such as celestial spirits may bleed." 
"—Par. Lost, vi. 329. 

In sore plight the goddess mounts to Olympus, and 
there, throwing herself into the arms of her mother 
Dione, bewails the wrong she has suffered at the hands 
of a presumptuous mortal. Dione comforts her as best 
she may, reminding her how in times past other of the 
Olympian deities have had to endure woes from men : 
Mars, when the giants Otus and Ephialtes bound him 
for thirteen months in brazen fetters ; Juno herself, the 
queen of Heaven, and Pluto, the king of the Shades, 
had been wounded by the daring Hercules. She fore- 
tells, however, an untimely death for the presumptu- 
ous hero who has raised his hand against a goddess : — 

" Fool and blind ! 
Unknowing he how short his term of life, 
Who fights against the gods ! for him no child 
Upon his knees shall lisp a father's name, 
Safe from the war and battle-field returned. 
Brave as he is, let Diomed beware 
He meet not with a mightier than himself : 
Then fair ^Egiale, Adrastus' child, 
The noble wife of valiant Diomed, 



78 THE ILIAD. 

Shall long, with lamentations loud, disturb 

The slumbers of her house, and vainly mourn 

Her youthful lord, the bravest of the Greeks." (D. ) 

But Dione is no prophet. Diomed returned home (if 
the later legends are to be believed) to find that his 
wife iEgiale had been anything but inconsolable during 
his absence. 

Venus' wound is healed, and her tears are soon 
4ried. But Minerva — whose province in the celestial 
government seems to be not only wisdom but satire 
— cannot resist a jest upon the unfortunate plight 
of the Queen of Love. She points her out to Jupiter, 
and suggests as a probable explanation of the wound, 
that she has been trying to lead astray some other fair 
Greek, like Helen, — 

" And as her hand the gentle dame caressed, 
A golden clasp has scratched her slender arm." 

Jupiter smiles, and calling his pouting daughter-goddess 
to his side, recommends her in future to leave to Mars 
and Minerva the dangers of the battle-field, and confine 
her own prowess to campaigns in which she is likely to 
be more victorious. 

Diomed is still rushing in pursuit of iEneas. He 
knows that Apollo is shielding him ; but not even this 
knowledge checks the impetuous Greek. 

" Thrice was his onset made, with murd'rous aim, 
And thrice Apollo struck his glittering shield ; 
But when with godlike force he sought to make 
His fourth attempt, the Far-destroyer spake 
In terms of awful menace ; ' Be advised, 
Tydides, and retire ; nor as a god 
Thyself esteem, since not alike the race 
Of gods immortal and of earth-born men.'" (D.) 

Diomed accepts the warning, and iEneas is carried 



THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE. 79 

off to the temple of Apollo in the citadel, where Latona 
and Diana tend and heal him. Apollo meanwhile 
replaces him in the battle by a phantom likeness, 
round which Greeks and Trojans continue the fight. 
Then he calls his brother deity the War-god to the 
rescue of the hard-prest Trojans, and entreats him to 
scare from the field this irreverent and outrageous 
champion, who, he verily believes, would lift his spear 
against Olympian Jove himself. In the likeness of a 
Thracian chief, Mars calls Hector to the rescue ; and the 
Trojan prince leaps from his chariot, and, crying his 
battle-cry, turns the tide of war. iEneas is restored, 
sound and well, to his place in the melee — somewhat 
indeed to the astonishment of his friends, who had 
seen him lying so long grievously wounded ; but, as 
the poet pithily remarks, little time had they to ask 
him questions. The two Ajaxes, Ulysses, Menelaus, 
and Agamemnon himself, " king of men," come to the 
forefront of the Greek battle : and the young Anti- 
lochus, son of the venerable Nestor, notably wins his 
spurs. But the Trojans have supernatural aid: and 
Diomed, of the purged vision, cries to his friends to 
beware, for that he sees the War-god in their front 
brandishing his huge spear. The Greek line warily gives 
ground before this immortal adversary. The Queen of 
Heaven can no longer endure to be a mere spectatress 
of the peril of her favourites. She obtains permission 
from Jupiter to send Minerva against Mars : and the two 
goddesses, seated in Juno's chariot of state, glide down 
from Olympus — 

" Midway between the earth and starry heaven" — 
and alight upon the plain of Troy. There Juno, taking 
human shape, taunts the Greek troops with cowardice — 



80 THE ILIAD. 

11 In form of Stent or of the brazen voice, 
Whose shout was as the shout of fifty men" — 

and whose name has made a familiar place for itself in 
our English vocabulary. 

" Shame on ye, Greeks, base cowards ! brave alone 
In outward semblance : while Achilles yet 
Went forth to battle, from the Dardan gates 
The Trojans never ventured to advance." 

Minerva seeks out Dionied, whom she finds lean- 
ing on his chariot, resting awhile from the fight, and 
"bathing the wound made by the arrow of Pandarus. 
She taunts him with his inferiority to his great father 
Tydeus, who was, she reminds him, " small in stature, 
but every inch a soldier." Dionied excuses himself by 
reference to her own charge to him — to fight with none 
of the immortals save Venus only. But now the god- 
dess withdraws the prohibition, and herself — putting 
on the " helmet of darkness," to hide herself from 
Mars — takes her place beside him in the chariot, 
instead of Sthenelus, his henchman and charioteer : 
and the chariot -axle groans beneath the more than 
mortal load. They drive in full career against the 
War-god : in vain he hurls his spear against Diomed, 
for the hand of the goddess turns it safely aside. The 
mortal champion is more successful: his spear strikes 
Mars in the flank, piercing the flesh, and drawing from 
him, as from Venus, the heavenly " ichor." And the 
wounded god cries out with a shout like that of ten 
thousand men, so that both hosts listen to the sound 
with awe and trembling. He too, like Venus, flies to 
Olympus, and there makes piteous complaint of the 
impious deeds which, at the instigation of Minerva, 
this headstrong mortal is permitted to do. His father 



TEE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE. 81 

Jupiter rates him soundly, as the outlaw of the Olym- 
pian family, inheriting his mother Juno's headstrong 
temper. However, he bids Paeon, the physician of the 
immortals, heal the wound, and Hebe prepares him a 
bath. Juno and Minerva have done their work, having 
driven Mars from the field, and they too quit the plains 
of Troy, and leave the mortal heroes to themselves. 

While Diomed still pursues his career of slaughter, 
Menelaus gives token of that easy and pliant disposition 
which half explains his behaviour to Helen. He has at 
his mercy a Trojan who has been thrown from his 
chariot, and begs his life. The fair-haired king is about 
to spare him, — as none in the whole story of the fight 
is spared, — when his brother Agamemnon comes up, 
and after chiding him for such soft-heartedness, pins the 
wretched suppliant to the ground with his ashen spear. 

So the fight goes on through the sixth book ; which 
is, however, chiefly remarkable for two of the most 
striking episodes in the poem. The first is the meeting 
of Diomed with the young Ly cian captain, Glaucus. En- 
countering him in the field, and struck by his bold 
bearing, he asks his name and race. Glaucus replies 
with that pathetic simile which, found under many 
forms in many poets, has its earliest embodiment in 
the verse of the Hebrew Psalmist and the Greek bard. 
" The days of man are but as grass." 

"Brave son of Tydeus, wherefore set thy mind 
My race to know ? the generations are 
As of the leaves, so also of mankind. 
As the leaves fall, now withering in the wind, 
And others are put forth, and spring descends, 
Such on the earth the race of men we find ; 
Each in his order a set time attends ; 
One generation rises and another ends." (W. ) 
F 



82 THE J LI AD. 

The young chieftain goes on, nevertheless, to announce 
his birth and lineage. He is the grandson of the noble 
Eellerophon — the rider of the wondrous horse Pegasus 
and the slayer of the monster Chimsera — all of whose 
exploits he narrates at length, with some disregard to 
probabilities, in the full roar of the battle round him. 
It turns out that he and Diomed are bound together by 
a tie which all of Greek blood scrupulously respected — 
the rights of hospitality exercised towards each other 
by some of their ancestors. Such obligations descended 
from father to son, and served from time to time to 
mitigate the fierce and vindictive spirit of an age when 
every man's hand was in some sort against another. 
The grandfather of Diomed had been Bellerophon's 
guest and friend. So the Greek places his spear in 
the ground, and vows that he will not raise his arm 
against Glaucus. There are enough besides of the 
Trojan allies for him to slay, and Glaucus may find 
Greeks enough on whom to flesh his valour ; but for 
themselves, the old hereditary bond shall hold good, and 
in token of amity they will change armour. A good 
exchange, indeed, for Diomed ; for whereas his own 
is but of the ordinary brass or bronze, the young 
Lyeian's panoply is richly inlaid with gold — " a hun- 
dred oxen's worth for the worth of nine." The Greek 
words have passed into a proverb. 

The Trojans are still hard prest, and by the advice 
of his brother Helenus, who has the gift of sooth- 
saying, and is as it were the domestic jDriest of the 
royal household, Hector hastens to the city, and 
directs his mother Hecuba to go with her matrons 
in solemn procession to the temple of Pallas, and be- 
seech the goddess to withdraw the terrible Diomed from 



THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE. 83 

the field. In the palace, to his indignation, he finds 
Paris dallying with Helen, and polishing his armour 
instead of joining the fight. Hector upbraids him 
sharply : and Helen, in a speech full of self-abase- 
ment, laments the unworthiness of her paramour. 
Hector speaks no word of reproach to her, though 
he gently declines her invitation to rest himself also 
a while from the battle. Paris promises to follow him 
at once to the field ; and Hector moves on to his own 
wife's apartments, to see her and his child once more 
before he goes back to the combat which he has a half- 
foreboding will end fatally for himself, whatever be. the 
fortunes of Troy. 

And now we are introduced to the second female 
character in the poem, standing in the strongest pos- 
sible contrast with that of Helen, but of no less admir- 
able conception. It is remarkable how entirely Homer 
succeeds in interesting us in his women, without having 
recourse to what might seem to us the very natural ex- 
pedient of dwelling on their personal charms ; especially 
when it is taken into account that, in his simple narra- 
tive, he has not the resources of the modern novelist, 
who can make even the plainest heroine attractive by 
painting her mental perfections, or setting before us 
the charms of her conversation. It has been said that 
he rather assumes than describes the beauty of Helen : 
in the case of Andromache, it has been remarked that 
he never once applies to her any epithet implying 
personal attractions, though all his translators, Lord 
Derby included, have been tempted to do so. It is 
as the wife and mother that Andromache charms us. 
We readily assume that she is comely, graceful — all 
that a woman should be; but it is simple grace of 



84 THE ILIAD. 

domestic character which forms the attraction of the 
Trojan princess. 

Hector does not find her, as he expects, in the palace. 
She had heard how the fortunes of the day seemed turn- 
ing against the Trojans; and she had hurried, "like one 
distraught," to the tower of the citadel, to see with her 
own eyes how the fight was going. He meets her at the 
Scaean gates, with the nurse and the child, "whom 
Hector called Scamandrius, from the river, hut the citi- 
zens Astyanax" — "defender of the city." The father 
looks silently on his boy, and smiles ; Andromache in 
tears clings to her husband, and makes a pathetic appeal 
to him not to be too prodigal of a life which is so dear to 
his wife and child. Her fate has been already that of 
many women of her day. Her father and seven tall 
brethren have been slain by the fierce Achilles, when 
ravaging the country round Troy he destroyed their 
native city of Cilician Thebes : her mother too is dead, 
and she is left alone. She adds the touching loving 
confession, which Pope's version has made popular 
enough even to unclassical ears — 

"But while my Hector still survives, I see 
My father, mother, brethren, all in thee." 

Hector soothes her, but it is with a mournful foreboding 

of evil to come. He values too much his own honour 

and fair fame to shrink from the battle : — 

"I should blush 
To face the men and long-robed dames of Troy, 
If like a coward I could shun the fight ; 
Nor could my soul the lessons of my youth 
So far forget, whose boast it still has been 
In the fore-front of battle to be found, 
Charged with my father's glory and mine own. 
Yet in my inmost soul too well I know 
The day must come when this our sacred Troy, 






THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE. 85 

And Priam's race, and Priam's royal self, 
Shall in one common ruin be o'erthrown. " (D. ) 

But that which wrings his heart most of all is the vision 
before his eyes of his beloved wife dragged into slavery. 
Pope's version of the rest of the passage is so good of 
its kind, and has so naturalised the scene to our English 
conceptions, that no closer version will ever supersede it. 

" Thus having spoke, th' illustrious chief of Troy 
Stretched his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy ; 
The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast, 
Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest. 
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled, 
And Hector hasted to relieve his child, 
The glitt'ring terrors from his brows unbound, 
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground. 
Then kissed the child, and lifting high in air, 
Thus to the Gods preferred a father's prayer : 
6 thou ! whose glory fills th' ethereal throne, 
And all ye deathless powers ! protect my son ! 
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown, 
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown, 
Against his country's foes the war to wage, 
And rise the Hector of the future age ! 
So when triumphant from successful toils, 
Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils, 
Whole hosts may hail him with deserved acclaim, 
And say — This chief transcends his father's fame : 
While pleased amidst the general shouts of Troy, 
His mother s conscious heart o'erflows with joy.' 
He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms, 
Restored the pleasing burthen to her arms ; 
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid, 
Hushed to repose, and with a smile surveyed. 
The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear, 
She mingled with the smile a tender tear. 
The softened chief with kind compassion viewed, 
And dried the falling drops, and thus pursued. " 

The " charms," be it said, are entirely Pope's idea, 
and do not harmonise with the simplicity of the true 



86 THE ILIAD. 

Homeric picture. The husband was not thinking of his 

wife's beauty. He " caresses her with his hand," and 

tries to cheer her with the thought that no hero dies 

until his work is done. 

"For, till my day of destiny is come, 
No man may take my life ; and when it comes, 
Nor brave nor coward can escape that day. 
But go thou home, and ply thy household cares, 
The loom and distaff, and appoint thy maids 
Their several tasks ; and leave to men of Troy, 
And chief of all to me, the toils of war." (D.) 

The tender vet half - contemptuous tone in which 
the iron soldier relegates the woman to her own infe- 
rior cares, is true to the spirit of every age in which 
war is the main business of man's life. Something in 
the same tone is the charming scene between Hotspur 
and his lady in Shakspeare's ' Henry IT.' 

il Hotspur. Away, you trifler ! — Love ? I love thee not, — 

I care Dot for thee, Kate ; this is no world 

To play with mammets and to tilt with lips : 

We must have bloody noses and crack't crowns, 

And pass them current too. — God's me, my horse ! — 

What say'st thou, Kate ? What wouldst thou have with me ? 
Lady Percy. Do you not love me ? Do you not indeed ? 

Well,— do not, then ; for since you love me not, 

I will not love myself. — Do you not love me ? 

Nay, tell me if you speak in jest, or no. 
Hotspur. Come, wilt thou see me ride ? 

And when I am o' horseback, I will swear 

I love thee infinitely. But hark you, Kate : 

I must not have you henceforth question me 

Whither I go, nor reason whereabout ; 

Whither I must, I must ; and, to conclude, 

This evening must I leave you, gentle Kate. 

I know you wise ; but yet, no further wise 

Than Harry Percy's wife : constant you are — 

But yet a woman : and for secrecy, 

No lady closer : for I well believe 

Thou wilt not utter that thou dost not know." 






THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE, 87 

Hector and his wife part; lie to the fight, accompanied 
now by Paris, girt for the battle in glittering armour, 
the show knight of the Trojans : Andromache back to 
the palace, casting many a lingering glance behind at 
the gallant husband she is fated never again to see 
alive. The Eoman ladies of the last days of the Re- 
public were not much given to sentiment ; but we do 
not wonder that Brutus' s wife, Portia, knowing well 
the Homeric story, was moved to tears in looking at a 
picture of this parting scene. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SECOND DAY S BATTLE. 

By the advice of his brother Helenus, who knows 
the counsels of heaven, Hector now challenges the 
Greek host to match some one of their chieftains 
against him in single combat. There is an unwilling- 
ness even amongst the bravest to accept the defiance — 
so terrible is the name of Hector. Menelaus — always 
gallant and generous — is indignant at their cowardice, 
and offers himself as the champion. He feels he is no 
match for Hector ; but, as he says with modest con- 
fidence, the issues in such case lie in the hands of 
heaven. But Agamemnon, ever affectionately careful 
of his brother, will not suffer such unequal risk : some 
more stalwart warrior shall be found to maintain the 
honour of the Achaeans. Old Nestor rises, and loudly 
regrets that he has no longer the eye and sinews of his 
youth — but the men of Greece, he sees with shame, 
are not now what they were in his day. Stung by the 
taunt, nine chiefs spring to their feet at once, and offer 
themselves for the combat. Conspicuous amongst 
them are Diomed, the giant Ajax, and King Agamem- 
non himself; and when the choice of a champion is 
referred to lot, the hopes and wishes of the whole army 



THE SECOND DAY'S BATTLE. 89 

are audibly expressed, that on one of these three the lot 
may fall. It falls on Ajax ; and amidst the congratula- 
tions and prayers of his comrades, the tall chieftain dons 
his armour, and strides forth to meet his adversary. 
The combat is maintained with vigour on both sides, 
till dusk comes on; the heralds interpose, and they 
separate with mutual courtesies and exchange of pre- 
sents. 

Both armies agree to a truce, that they may col- 
lect and burn their dead who strew the plain thickly 
after the long day's battle. The Trojans, dispirited by 
their loss, and conscious that, owing to the breach of 
the first truce by the treacherous act of Pandarus, they 
are fighting under the curse of perjury, hold a council 
of war, in which Antenor (the Nestor of Troy) proposes 
to restore Helen and her wealth, and so put an end at 
last to this weary siege. But Paris refuses — he will 
give back the treasure, but not Helen ; and the pro- 
posal thus made is spurned by the Greeks as an insult. 
They busy themselves in building a fortification — ditch, 
and wall, and palisade — to protect their fleet from any 
sudden incursion of the Trojans. When this great work 
is completed, they devote the next night to one of those 
heavy feasts and deep carousals, to which men of the 
heroic mould have always had the repute of being 
addicted in the intervals of hard fighting. Most op- 
portunely, a fleet of merchant - ships comes in from 
Lemnos, laden with wine ; in part a present sent by 
Euneus, son of the renowned voyager Jason, to the two 
royal brothers ; in part a trading speculation, which 
meets with immediate success among the thirsty host. 
The thunder of Olympus rolls all through the night, 
for the Thunderer is angry at the prolongation of the 



90 TEE ILIAD. 

war : but the Greeks content their consciences with 
pouring copious libations to appease his wrath, and 
after their prolonged revelry sink into careless slumber. 
At daybreak Jupiter holds a council in Olympus, 
and harangues the assembled deities at some length — 
with a special request that he may not be interrupted. 
He forbids, on pain of his royal displeasure, any fur- 
ther interference on the part of the Olympians on 
either side in the contest ; and then, mounting his 
chariot, descends in person to Mount Ida to survey the 
field of battle, once more crowded with fierce com- 
batants. He hesitates, apparently, which side he shall 
aid — for he has no intention of observing for himself 
the neutrality which he has so strictly enjoined upon 
others. So he weighs in a balance the fates of Greek 
and Trojan : the former draws down the scale, while 
the destiny of Troy mounts to heaven. The metaphor 
is reversed, according to our modern notions ; it is the 
losing side which should be found wanting when 
weighed in the balance. And so Milton has it in the 
passage which is undoubtedly founded on these lines 
of Homer. "The Omnipotent," says Milton, 

" Hung forth in heaven His golden scales, yet seen 
Betwixt Astrcea and the Scorpion sign, 
Wherein all things created first He weighed, 
The pendulous round earth with balanced air 
In counterpoise ; now ponders all events, 
Battles and realms ; in these He put two weights, 
The sequel each of parting and of fight : 
The latter quick up flew and kicked the beam." 

And Gabriel bids Satan look up, and mark the warn- 
ing :— 

" ' For proof look up, 

And read thy lot in yon celestial sign, 

Where thou art weighed, and shown how light, how weak, 



TEE SECOND DAY'S BA TTLE. 9 1 

If thou resist ! ' The Fiend looked up, and knew 
His mounted scale aloft; nor more, but fled 
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night." 

— Par. Lost, end of B. iv. 

In accordance with this decision the Thunderer sends 
his lightnings down upon the host of the Greeks, and 
throws them into terror and confusion. iSTestor, still 
in the thickest of the fray, has one of his chariot- 
horses killed by a shaft from the bow of Paris ; and 
while he is thus all but helpless, Diomed sees the 
terrible Hector bearing down on the old chief in full 
career. He bids 2\estor mount with him, and together 
they encounter the Trojan prince, against whom Dio- 
med hurls his spear : he misses Hector, but kills his 
charioteer. As Diomed presses on, a thunderbolt from 
Jupiter ploughs the ground right in front of his 
startled horses. JSTestor sees in this omen the wrath of 
heaven ; and at his entreaty Diomed reluctantly allows 
him to turn the horses, and retires, pursued by the 
loud taunts of Hector, who bids the Greek " wench " 
go hide herself. Thrice he half turns to meet his jest- 
ing enemy, and thrice the roll of the angry thunder 
warns him not to dare the wrath of the god. Hector 
in triumph shouts to his comrades to drive the Greeks 
back to their new trenches; and burn their fleet. He 
calls to his horses by name (he drove a bright bay and 
a chestnut, and called them Whitefoot and Firefly), 
and bids them do him good suit and service now, if 
ever, in return for all the care they have had from 
Andromache, who has fed them day by day with her 
own hands, even before she would offer the wine-cup 
to their thirsty master. The Greeks are driven back 
into their trenches, where they are rallied by the royal 



92 TEE ILIAD. 

brothers Agamemnon and Menelans in person. They 
have too on their side a bowman as good as Pandarus or 
Paris, who now does them gallant service. It is Teucer, 
the younger brother of the huge Ajax. The description 
of his manner of fight would suit almost exactly the light 
archer and his pavoise-bearer of the medieval battle : — 

" Ajax the shield extended : Teucer then 
Peered from behind, and with a shaft forth stept, 
And slew one singled from the enemy's men : 
Then, as a child creeps to his mother, crept 
To Ajax, who the shield before him swept." (W.) 

Eight times he draws his bow, and every arrow reaches 
its mark in a Trojan. Twice he shoots at Hector, but 
each time the shaft is turned aside, and finds some less 
renowned victim. Of these the last is Hector's char- 
ioteer — the second who in this day's battle has paid 
the forfeit of that perilous honour. Hector leaps down 
to avenge his death, and Teucer, felled to the ground 
by a huge fragment of rock, is carried off the field with 
a broken shoulder, still covered by the shield of Ajax. 
The Greeks remain penned within thejr stockade, and 
nothing but the approach of night saves their fleet from 
destruction. The victorious Trojans bivouac on the 
field, their watch-fires lighting up the night ; for Hec- 
tor's only fear now is lest his enemies should embark 
and set sail under cover of the darkness, and so escape 
the fate which he is confident awaits them on the mor- 
row. Mr Tennyson has chosen for translation the fine 
passage describing the scene, which closes the Eighth 
Book :— 

" As when in heaven the stars about the moon 
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, 
And every height comes out, and jutting peak, 
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens 



THE SECOND DAY'S BATTLE. 93 

Break open to their highest, and all the stars 
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart : 
So many a fire between the ships and stream 
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, 
A thousand on the plain ; and close by each 
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire ; 
And, champing golden grain, the horses stood 
Hard by their chariots, waiting for the dawn. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES. 

The opening of the Mnth Book shows us the Greeks 
utterly disheartened inside their intrenchments. The 
threat of the dishonoured Achilles is fast being accom- 
plished : they cannot stand before Hector. Agamemnon 
calls a hasty council, and proposes — in sad earnest, this 
time — that all should re-embark and sail home to Greece. 
The proposal is received in silence by all except Diomed. 
He boldly taunts the king with cowardice : the other 
Greeks may go home if they will, but he and his 
good comrade Sthenelus will stay and fight it out, 
even if they fight alone. Then J^estor takes the privi- 
lege of his age to remind Agamemnon that his insult 
to Achilles is the real cause of their present distress. 
Let an embassy be sent to him where he lies beside 
his ships, in moody idleness, to offer him apology and 
compensation for the wrong. The king consents ; 
and Ajax, Ulysses, and Phoenix are chosen to accom- 
pany the royal heralds on this mission of reconcilia- 
tion. Ajax — the chief who in all warlike points stands 
second only to Achilles himself in the estimation of 
the army — is a delegate to whom even the great captain 
of the Myrmidons must surely listen with respect. 
Phoenix has been a sort of foster-father to Achilles 



THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES, 95 

from his boyhood, intrusted with the care of him by 
his father Peleus, and has now accompanied him to 
the war by the old man's special request, to aid him 
with advice and counsel. If any one in the camp has 
any influence over the headstrong prince, it will be 
the man who, as he says, has dandled him in his arms 
in his helpless infancy. And no diplomatic enterprise 
could be complete without the addition of Ulysses,. 
the man of many devices and of persuasive tongue. 
The chiefs set forth, and take their way along the shore 
to the camp of the Myrmidons. They find Achilles 
sitting in his tent, solacing his perturbed spirit with 
playing on the lyre, to the music of which he sings the 
deeds of heroes done in the days of old — the exact pro- 
totype of those knightly troubadours of later times, 
who combined the accomplishments of the minstrel with 
the prowess of the soldier. His faithful henchman 
Patroclus sits and listens to the song. With graceful 
and lofty courtesy the chief of the Myrmidons rises from 
his seat, and lays his lyre aside, and welcomes his visit- 
ors. He will hear no message until they have shared 
his hospitality. He brings them in, and sets them 
down on couches spread with purple tapestry. Then, 
with the grand patriarchal simplicity of the days of 
Abraham, when no office done for a guest was held to 
be servile, he bids Patroclus fill a larger bowl, and mix 
the wine strong, and make good preparation of the 
flesh of sheep, and goats, and well-fed swine. Tho 
great hero himself divides the carcases, while his char- 
ioteer Automedon holds them. The joints are cooked 
above the heaped embers on ample spits under tho 
superintendence of Patroclus ; and when all is ready, 
they fall to with that wholesome appetite which has, 



96 THE ILIAD. 

been the characteristic of most heroes in classical and 
medieval times, Achilles carving for his guests, while 
Patroclus deals out the bread. Professor Wilson's re- 
marks on the scene are characteristic : — 

" In nothing was the constitution of the heroes more 
enviable than its native power — of eating at all times, 
and without a moment's warning. Xever does a meal 
to any distinguished individual come amiss. Their 
stomachs were as heroic as their hearts, their bowels 
magnanimous. It cannot have been forgotten by the 
reader, who hangs with a watering mouth over the de- 
scription of this entertainment, that about two hours 
before these three heroes, Ulysses, Ajax, and old Phoenix, 
had made an almost enormous supper in the pavilion of 
Agamemnon. But their walk 

' Along the margin of the sounding deep ' 

had reawakened their slumbering appetite." 

In this respect, too, the heroes of the Carlo vingian 
and Arthurian romances equal those of Homer — pro- 
bably, indeed, taking their colour from his originals. 
ISTay, a good capacity for food and drink seems in itself 
ta have been considered an heroic quality. When Sir 
Gareth of Orkney sits him down at table, coming as a 
stranger to King Arthur's court, his performance as a 
trencher-man excites as much admiration as his soldier- 
like thews and sinews. The company declare of him 
enthusiastically that " they never saw so goodly a man, 
nor so well of his eating." And in the same spirit Sir 
Kay, Arthur's foster-brother, is said, in the Welsh 
legend, to " have drunk like four, and fought like a 
hundred." The animal virtues are closely linked to- 
gether 5 we still prognosticate favourably of a horse's 



TEE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES. 97 

powers of endurance if we see that lie is, like Sir Gareth, 
a good feeder. And perhaps it is some lingering re- 
miniscence of the old heroic ages that leads us still to 
mark our appreciation of modern heroes by bestowing 
on them a public dinner. 

When the meal is over, Ulysses rises, and in accord- 
ance with immemorial custom — as old, it appears, as 
these half-mythical ages — -pledges the health of their 
illustrious host. In a speech which does full justice 
to the oratorical powers which the poet assigns him, he 
lays before Achilles the proposal of Agamemnon. He 
sets forth the straits to which the Greeks are reduced, 
pent within their fortifications by the terrible Hector, 
and acknowledges, in the fullest manner, that in the 
great name of Achilles lies their only hope of rescue. 
He dwells upon the remorse which Achilles himself 
will surely feel, when too late, if he suffers the .hopes 
of Greece to be ruined by the indulgence of his own 
haughty spirit — the temper against which, as he re- 
minds him, his aged father warned him when first he 
set out for Troy : — 

" My son, the boon of strength, if so they will, 
Juno or Pallas have the power to give ; 
But thou thyself thy haughty spirit must curb, 
For better far is gentle courtesy." 

He lays before him the propositions of Agamemnon. 
Briseis shall be restored to him, in all honour, pure as 
when she left him; so the great point in the quarrel 
is fully conceded. Moreover, the king will give him 
the choice of his three daughters in marriage, if it ever 
be their happy fate to see again the shores of Argos, 
and will add such dowry 

" As never man before to daughter gave." 
G 



98 THE ILIAD. 

And lie will send, for the present, peace-offerings of royal 
magnificence ; ten talents of pure gold, seven fair Les- 
bian slaves, " well skilled in household cares," twelve 
horses of surpassing fleetness — the prizes they have 
already won would be in themselves a fortune — and 
seven prosperous towns on the sea-coast of Argos. He 
adds, in well-conceived climax to his speech, an appeal 
to higher motives. If Achilles will not relax his wrath 
against Agamemnon, at least let him have some com- 
passion on the unoffending Greeks ; let him bethink 
himself of the national honour — of his own great name ; 
shall Hector be allowed to boast, as he does now, that 
no Greek dares meet him in the field 1 

But neither the eloquence of Ulysses, nor the gar- 
rulous pleading of his old foster-father Phoenix, who 
indulges himself and his company with stories of 
Achilles' boyhood, and of the exploits of his own 
younger days, can bend the iron determination of the 
hero. He will have none of Agamemnon's gifts, and 
none of Agamemnon's daughters — no, not were the 
princess as fair as Yenus. Greece has store of fair 
maidens for him to choose from if he will. l^ay, had 
either woman or wealth been his delight, he had scarce 
come to Troy. He had counted the cost when he set 
out for the war : — 

" Successful forays may good store provide ; 
And tripods may be gained, and noble steeds : 
But when the breath of man hath passed his lips, 
Nor strength, nor foray can the loss repair. 
I by my goddess mother have been warned, 
The silver-footed Thetis, that o'er me 
A double chance of destiny impends : 
If here remaining, round the walls of Troy 
I wage the war, I ne'er shall see my home, 
But then undying glory shall be mine : 



THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES. 99 

If I return, and see my native land, 

My glory all is gone ; but length of life 

Shall then be mine, and death be long deferred." (D.) 

Besides, lie adds with, biting scarcasm, Agamemnon 
can have no need now of his poor services. He has 
built a wall, he hears, — with ditch and palisade to 
boot : though he doubts whether, after all, it will keep 
out Hector. To be sure, when lie was in the field, no 
wall was needed. 

ISTor is he a whit more moved by the few blunt and 
soldier-like remarks with which Ajax closes the con- 
ference. They may as well return, says that chief to 
Ulysses ; words are lost upon one so obstinate as Achilles, 
who will neither listen to reason, nor cares for the love 
of his old companions in arms. Ajax has no patience, 
either, with the romantic side of the quarrel — 
(C And for a single girl ! we offer seven." 

Eeproach and argument are alike in vain. The hero 
listens patiently and courteously ; but nothing shall 
move him from his resolution, unless Hector, the god- 
like, shall carry fire and sword even to the ships and 
tents of the Myrmidons ; a venture which, he thinks, 
the Trojan prince, with all his hardihood, will pause 
before he makes. 

With downcast hearts the envoys return to Agamem- 
non ; the aged Phoenix alone remaining behind, at 
Achilles' special request, to accompany him when he 
shall set sail for home. Great consternation falls on 
the assembled chiefs when they learn the failure of 
their overtures ; only Diomed, chivalrous as ever, 
laments that they should have stooped to ask grace at 
such a churlish hand. Let Achilles go or stay as he will : 
for themselves — let every man refresh himself with 



100 TEE ILIAD. 

food and wine — "for therein do lie both strength and 
courage" — and then betake themselves to their no less 
needful rest : ready, so soon as " the rosy-fingered 
dawn " appears, to set the battle fearlessly in array, in 
front of their ships and tents, against this redoubtable 
Hector. 
But 

" Uneasy lies the bead that wears a crown." 

There is no rest for the King of Men, who has the fate 
of a national armament on his souL He looks forth upon 
the plain, where the thousand watchfires of the enemy 
are blazing out into the night, and hears the confused 
hum of their thick-lying battalions, and the sounds of 
the wild Eastern music with which they are enlivening 
their revels, and celebrating their victory by anticipa- 
tion. He rises from his troubled couch, determined to 
hold a night-council with Nestor and other chiefs of 
mark. He is donning his armour, when he is visited 
by his brother Menelaus — for he too has no rest, 
thinking of the dire straits into which in his sole cause 
the armies of Greece are driven. The royal brothers 
go in different directions through the camp, and quietly 
rouse all the most illustrious captains. Nestor is the 
guiding spirit in the council, as before. He advises a 
reconnoissance of the enemy's lines under cover of the 
darkness. The office of a spy, be it remembered, was 
reckoned in these old times, as in the days of the 
Hebrew commonwealth, a service of honour as well as 
of danger ; and the kings and chiefs of the Greeks no 
more thought it beneath their dignity than Gideon did 
in the case of the Midianites. The man who could 
discover for them the counsels of Hector would win for 
himself not only a solid reward, but an immortal name — 



THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES. 101 

" High as heaven in all men's mouths 
Should be his praise, and ample his reward ; 
For every captain of a ship should give 
A coal-black ewe, and at her foot a lamb, 
A prize beyond compare : and high should be 
His place at banquets and at solemn feasts." 

Diomed straightway volunteers for the adventure, and 
out of the many chiefs who offer themselves as his 
comrade, he chooses Ulysses. So — not without due 
prayer to Heaven — valour and subtlety go forth to- 
gether on their perilous errand. 

Meanwhile the same idea has occurred to Hector; 
he too would learn the counsels of his enemies. One 
Dolon — a young warrior who has a fine taste for horses, 
"but is otherwise of somewhat feminine type (Homer 
tells us he was the only brother of five sisters), and 
whose main qualification is fieetness of foot — is tempted 
to undertake the enterprise on a somewhat singular 
condition — that he shall have as his prize the more 
than mortal horses of Achilles, when, as he doubts 
not will be soon the case, the spoils of the conquered 
Greeks shall come to be divided. And Hector, with 
equal confidence, swears " by his sceptre " that they 
shall be his and none other's. Wrapped in a cloak of 
wolfskin, and wearing a cap of marten's fur instead of 
a helmet, he too steals out into the night. He does 
not escape the keen vision of Ulysses. The Greek 
spies crouch behind some dead bodies, and allow him 
to pass them, when they rise and cut off his retreat to 
the Trojan camp. At first he thinks they are Trojans, 
sent after him by Hector ; 

" But when they came a spear-cast off, or less, 
He knew them for his foes, and slipt away 
With lithe knees flying : and they behind him press. 
As when with jagged teeth two dogs of prey 



102 TEE ILIAD. 

Hang steadily behind, to seize and slay, 
Down the green woods, a wild fawn or a hare, 
That shrieking flies them ; on his track so lay 
Odysseus and the son of Tydeus there, 
Winding him out from Troy, and never swerved a hair. * (W. ) 

Their aim is to take him alive. Diomed at last gets 
within an easy spear- cast — 

' Then, hurling, he so ruled his aim, the spear 
Whizzed by the neck, then sank into the ground. 
He, trembling in his teeth, and white with fear, 
Stood : from his mouth there came a chattering sound. 
They panting, as he wept, his arms enwound. 
i Take me alive, and sell me home,' cried he ; 
' Brass, iron, and fine gold are with me found. 
Glad will my father render countless fee, 
If living by the ships they bear him news of me.' " (W.) 

Ulysses parleys with the unhappy youth, and drags 
from his terrified lips not only the secret of his errand, 
but the disposition of the Trojan forces, — most con- 
venient information for their own movements. Especi- 
ally, he tells them where they might find an easy prey, 
such as his own soul would love. Ehesus, king of 
the Thracian allies, has his camp apart — 

" No steeds that e'er I saw, 
For size and beauty, can with his compare ; 
Whiter than snow, and swifter than the wind." 

The unwilling treachery does not save his wretched 

life. Ulysses sarcastically admires his choice of a 

reward — 

" High soared thy hopes indeed, that thought to win 
The horses of Achilles ; hard are they 
For mortal man to harness or control, 
Save for Achilles' self, the goddess-born." 

Then — with the cruel indifference to human life which 
marks every one of Homer's heroes — he severs his 
head from his body. 



THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES. 103 

Following the directions given by Dolon, the two 
Greeks make their way first to the quarters of the 
Thracian contingent. Swiftly and silently Diomed 
despatches the king and twelve of his warriors, as they 
sleep, while Ulysses drives off the snow-white horses. 
"With these trophies they return safe to the Greek 
camp, where they are cordially welcomed, though it 
must he admitted they have gained but little insight 
into the designs of Hector.* 

* There is pretty good authority for considering the whole of 
this night expedition, which forms a separate book (the tenth) 
in the division of the poem, as an interpolation. It is a 
separate lay of an exploit performed by Ulysses and Diomed, 
and. certainly does not in any way affect the action of the 
poem. 



CHAPTEE VII. 



THE THIRD BATTLE. 



"With the morrow's dawn begins the third and great 
battle, at the Greek lines, which occupies from the 
eleventh to the eighteenth book of the poem. Aga- 
memnon is the hero of the earlier part of the day, and 
Hector is warned by Jupiter not to hazard his own 
person in the battle, unless the Greek king is wounded ; 
which at last he is, by the spear of a son of Antenor. 
Ulysses and Diomed supply his place ; until Paris, 
fighting in somewhat coward fashion, crouching behind 
the monumental stone of the national hero Ilus, pins 
Diomed through the right heel to the ground with an 
arrow. Ulysses stands manfully at bay almost alone 
amidst a host of enemies, holding his ground, though 
he too is wounded, till Ajax comes to his aid. Still 
the Greeks have the worst of it. The skilful leech 
]\Iachaon, amongst others, is wounded by an arrow from 
the bow of Paris : till even Achilles, watching the fight 
from the lofty prow of his ship, sees his day of triumph 
and vengeance close at hand. He sends Patroclus to 
the field — nominally to inquire who has just been 
carried off wounded, but with the further object, we 
may suppose, of learning the state of the case more 



THE THIRD BATTLE. 105 

thoroughly. Nestor, to whose tent Patroclus comes, 
begs him to use his influence now with his angry chief, 
and persuade him, if not to come to the rescue in per- 
son, at least to send his stout Myrmidons to the aid of 
his countrymen, under Patroclus' own command. 

Again the Greeks are driven within their intrench- 
ments, and Hector and the Trojan chariot- fighters pres- 
sing on them, attempt in their fierce excitement even 
to make their horses leap the ditch and palisade. Foiled 
in this, they dismount, and, forming in five detachments 
under the several command of Hector, Helenus, Paris, 
zEneas, and Asius son of Hyrtacus, they attack the 
stockade at five points at once. Asius alone refuses to 
quit his chariot \ and choosing the quarter where a gate 
is still left open to receive the Greek fugitives, he 
drives full at the narrow entrance. But in that gate- 
way on either hand stand two stalwart warders, Leon- 
teus and Polypates. The latter is the son of the 
mighty hero Pirithous, friend and comrade of Hercules, 
and both are of the renowned race of the Lapithae. 
Gallantly the two champions keep the dangerous post 
against all comers, while their friends from the top of 
the rampart shower huge stones upon their assailants. 
Even Hector at his point of attack can make no im- 
pression : and as his followers vainly strive to pass the 
ditch, an omen from heaven strikes them with appre- 
hension as to the final issue. An eagle, carrying off 
a huge serpent through the air, is bitten by the reptile, 
and drops it, writhing and bleeding, in the midst of 
the combatants. Polydamas points it out to Hector, 
and reads in it a warning that their victory will be at 
best a dearly-bought one. Hector rebukes him for his 
weakness in putting faith in portents. The noble 



106 THE ILIAD. 

words in which, the poet sums up Hector's creed in 
such matters have passed into a proverb with patriots 
of every age and nation — 

" The best of omens is our country's cause." 

Sarpedon the Lycian, who claims none less than 
Jupiter for his father, has taken chief command of the 
Trojan auxiliaries, and, gallantly seconded by his coun- 
tryman Glaucus, sweeps "like a black storm" on the 
tower where Mnestheus, the Athenian, commands, and 
is like to have carried it, when Glaucus falls wounded 
by an arrow from Teucer. The slaughter is terrible on 
both sides, and the ditch and palisade are red with 
blood. " The balance of the fight hangs even ;" until 
at last the Trojan prince lifts a huge fragment of rock, 
and heaves it at the wooden gates which bar the en- 
trance at his point of attack. 

' This way and that the severed portals flew 
Before the crashing missile ; dark as night 
His low'ring brow, great Hector sprang within ; 
Bright flashed the brazen armour on his breast, 
As through the gates, two javelins in his hand, 
He sprang ; the gods except, no power might meet 
That onset ; blazed his eyes with lurid fire. 
Then to the Trojans, turning to the throng, 
He called aloud to scale the lofty wall ; 
They heard, and straight obeyed ; some scaled the wall ; 
Some through the strong-built gates continuous poured ; 
While in confusion irretrievable 
Fled to their ships the panic-stricken Greeks." (D.) 

[Neptune has been watching the fight from the 
wooded heights of Samothrace, and sees the imminent 
peril of his friends. "In four mighty strides" — the 
woods and mountains trembling beneath his feet — he 
reaches the bay of CEge, in Achaia, where far in the 



THE THIRD BATTLE. 107 

depths lie his shining palaces of gold. There the sea- 
god mounts his chariot, yoking 

" Beneath his car the brazen-footed steeds, 

I Of swiftest flight, with manes of flowing gold. 

All clad in gold, the golden lash he grasped 
Of curious work, and, mounting on his car, 
Skimmed o'er the waves ; from all the depths below 
Gambolled around the monsters of the deep, 
Acknowledging their king ; the joyous sea 
Parted her waves ; swift flew the bounding steeds ; 
Nor was the brazen axle wet with spray, 
When to the ships of Greece their lord they bore." (B.) 

He takes the form of the soothsayer Calchas, and in 
! his person rallies the discomfited Greeks, and summons 
the greater and the lesser Ajax to the rescue. Both 
feel a sudden accession of new vigour and courage ; 
Ajax Oileus detects the divinity of their visitor, as the 
seeming Calchas turns to depart. The two chiefs 
quickly gather round them a phalanx of their comrades. 

" Spear close by spear, and shield by shield o'erlaid, 
Buckler to buckler pressed, and helm to helm, 
And man to man ; the horse-hair plumes above, 
That nodded on the warriors' glittering crests, 
Each other touched, so closely massed they stood. 
Backward by many a stalwart hand were drawn 
The spears, in act to hurl ; their eyes and minds 
Turned to the front, and eager for the fray." (D.) 

Hector's career is stayed. Ajax the Lesser brings 
into play his band of Locrian bowmen, of little use iu 
the open field, but good when they are under cover. 

" Theirs were not the hearts 
To brook th' endurance of the standing fight ; 
Nor had they brass-bound helms with horse-hair plume, 
Nor ample shields they bore, nor ashen spear, 
But came to Troy in bows and twisted slings 
Of woollen cloth confiding." 

The galling storm of their arrows throws confusion 



108 THE ILIAD. 

into the Trojan ranks. Helenus and Deiphobus, 
Hector's brothers, have already been led off wounded : 
Asms son of Hyrtaeus has found his trust in chariot 
and horses vain, and lies dead within the Greek lines. 
But Hector still presses on, and Paris shows that he 
can play the soldier on occasion as successfully as the 
gallant. The Greeks, too, miss their leaders. Aga- 
memnon, Ulysses, Diomed, are all disabled for the time. 
The two Ajaxes and Idomeneus of Crete do all that 
man can do. But the stockade has been forced, and 
the fight is now round the ships, — the last hope of bare 
safety for the Greek forces. If Hector burns them, as 
he boasts he will, all means of retreat, all the long- 
cherished prospect of seeing their homes again, are lost 
to them. In a hasty conference with his wounded 
companions beside his galley, Agamemnon, suffering 
and dispirited, once more counsels retreat before it b3 
too late. If they can but hold out till nightfall, then, 
under cover of the darkness, he proposes to take the 
sea. Those vessels which lie close to the shore may 
be launched at once without discovery from the enemy, 
and kept out at anchor : the rest can follow when the 
Trojans have, as usual, withdrawn from immediate 
attack, as soon as the shades of evening make the dis- 
tinction hazardous between friend and foe. Ulysses 
and Diomed overrule the proposal ; and the wounded 
leaders return to the scene of combat, unable to take an 
active part, but inspiriting their men from safe posts 
of observation. 

The interlude of comedy is furnished again by the 
denizens of Olympus. Juno has watched with delight 
the successful efforts of Xeptune to rally the Greeks 
against Hector and the hateful Trojans ; but she is in 



THE THIRD BATTLE. 1C9 

an agony of apprehension lest Jupiter, who has his 
attention just now occupied in Thrace, should interfere 
at this critical moment, and still grant the victory to 
Hector. She determines to put in force all her powers 
of blandishment, and to coax the Thunderer to spend 
in her company those precious hours which are laden 
with the fate of her Greeks. She is not content with 
her ordinary powers of fascination : she applies to the 
goddess of love for the loan of her magic girdle, — 

" Her broidered cestus, wrought with every charm 
To win the heart ; there Love, there young Desire, 
There fond Discourse, and there Persuasion dwelt, 
Which oft enthrals the mind of wisest men." 

It certainly enthrals the mind of the sovereign of 
Olympus ; who, in all cases where female attractions 
■were concerned, was even as the most foolish of mortals. 
Transfigured by the cestus of Venus, his queen appears 
to him in a halo of celestial charms which are irresist- 
ible. In her company he speedily forgets the wretched 
squabbles of the creatures upon earth. Juno has bribed 
the god of sleep also to become her accomplice; and 
the dread king is soon locked in profound repose. 

Then Xeptune seizes his opportunity, and heads 
the Greeks in person. Agamemnon, disregarding his 
recent wound, is seen once more in the front of the 
battle. Ajax meets Hector hand to hand, receives his 
spear full in his breast just where his cross-belts meet, 
and so escapes un wounded. As the Trojan prince 
draws back to recover himself, the giant Greek up- 
heaves a huge stone that has shored up one of the gal- 
leys, and hurls it with main strength against his breast. 
" Like an oak of the forest struck by lightning " 
Hector falls prone in the dust. With shouts of exul- 



110 . THE ILIAD. 

tation, .Ajax and his comrades rush to crown their 
victory by stripping his armour ; but the great chiefs of 
the enemy, — ^Eneas, Polydamas, the Lycian captains 
Sarpedon and Glaucus — gather round and lock their 
shields in front of the fallen hero, while others bear 
him aside out of the battle, still in a death-like swoon, 
to where his chariot stands. Dismayed at the fall of 
their great leader, the Trojans give ground ; the trench 
is recrossed, and the Greeks breathe again. 

Jupiter awakes from sleep just in time to see the 
mischief that has been done ; the Trojans in flight, 
the Greeks with Xeptune at their head pursuing ; 
Hector lying senseless by the side of his chariot, still 
breathing heavily, and vomiting blood from his bruised 
chest, and surrounded by his anxious comrades. He 
turns wrathfully upon Juno — it is her work, he knows. 
He reminds her of former penalties which she had 
brought upon herself by deceiving him. 

" Hast thou forgotten how in former times 
I hung thee from on high, and to thy feet 
Attached two ponderous anvils, and thy hands 
With golden fetters bound which none might break ? 
There didst thou hang amid the clouds of heaven : 
Through all Olympus' breadth the gods were wroth ; 
Yet dared not one approach to set thee free." (D.) 

He does not proceed, however, to exercise any such 
barbarous conjugal discipline on this occasion, and is 
readily appeased by his queen's assurance that the in- 
terference of Neptune was entirely on his own proper 
motion. He condescends even to explain why he 
desires to give a temporary triumph to the Trojans : 
it is that, in accordance with his sworn promise to 
Thetis, he may avenge the insult offered to her son 



THE THIRD BATTLE. Ill 

Achilles, by teaching the Greeks their utter helpless- 
ness without him. 

The Goddess of the Kainbow is sent to warn Xep- 
tune, on pain of the Thunderer's displeasure, to quit 
the fight. The sea-king demurs. "Was not a fair 
partition made, in the primeval days, between the 
three brother-gods, of the realms of Air, and Sea, and 
Darkness? and is not Earth common ground to all? 
Why is not Jupiter content with his own lawful 
domains, and by what right does he assume to dictate 
to a brother — and a brother-king ? " Iris, however, 
calms him ; he is perfectly right in theory, she admits ; 
but in practice he will find his elder brother too 
strong for him. So the sea-god, in sulky acquiescence, 
leaves the scene of battle, and plunges down into the 
depths of his own dominion. Phoebus Apollo, on the 
other hand, receives Jupiter's permission to aid the 
Trojans. He sweeps down from Olympus to the spot 
where Hector lies, now slowly reviving. The hero 
recognises his celestial visitor, and feels at once his 
strength restored, and his ardour for the battle re- 
awakened. To the consternation of the Greeks, he 
reappears in the field, fierce and vigorous as before. 
But he no longer comes alone ; in his front moves 
Phoebus Apollo, — 

<l His shoulders veiled in cloud ; Ms arm sustained 
The awful iEgis, dread to look on, hung 
With shaggy tassels round and dazzling bright, 
Which Vulcan, skilful workman, gave to Jove, 
To scatter terror 'mid the souls of men." (D.) 

When the sun-god flashes this in the faces of the 
Greeks, heart and spirit fail them. Stalking in the 
van of the Trojans, he leads them up once more against 



112 THE ILIAD. 

the embankment, and, planting his mighty foot upon 
it, levels a wide space for the passage of the chariots, — 

" Easy, as when a child upon the beach, 
In wanton play, with hands and feet o'erthrows 
The mound of sand which late in sport he raised." 

The habits and pursuits of grown-up men change 
with the passing generation ; but the children of 
Homer's day might play with our own, and under- 
stand each other's ways perfectly. 

Chariots and footmen press through the breach pell- 
mell, and again the battle rages round the Greek 
galleys. Standing on their high decks, the Greeks 
maintain the struggle gallantly with the long boarding- 
pikes, as we should call them, kept on board for use in 
such emergencies. Ajax' galley is attacked by Hector 
in person ; but the Greek chief stands desperately at 
bay, wielding a huge pike thirty-three feet long, and 
his brother Teucer plies his arrows with fatal effect 
upon the crowded assailants : until Jupiter, alarmed 
lest Hector should be struck, snaps his bowstring in 
sunder. Hector calls loudly for fire to burn the ves- 
sels, and one warrior after another, torch in hand, 
makes the attempt at the cost of his life, until twelve 
lie biting the sand, slain by the huge weapon of Ajax. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS. 

t 

Patroclus, sitting in the tent of the wounded Eury- 
pylus, sees the imminent peril of his countrymen. He 
cannot hear the sight, and taking hasty leave of his 
friend, hurries back to the quarters of Achilles, and 
stands before him in an agony of silent tears. At first 
the hero affects to chide his follower for such girlish 
sorrow — what cares he for the Greeks? It is plain, 
however, that he does care ; and when Patroclus, in 
very outspoken terms, upbraids him for his obduracy, 
and asks that, even if the dark doom that hangs over 
him makes his chief unwilling to take the field in 
person, he will at least send him with the Myrmidons 
to the rescue, Achilles at once consents. Patroclus 
shall go, clad in his armour, that so perchance the 
Trojans may be deceived, and think that they see the 
well-known crest of Achilles himself once more leading 
the fight. Only he warns him not to advance too 
far ; to be content with rescuing the galleys, and not 
attempt to press his victory home to the walls of Troy; 
in that case he will find the gods of the enemy turn 
their wrath against him. In spite of his assumed in- 
difference, Achilles is intently watching the combat- 

H 



114 TEE ILIAD. 

ants in the distance, and sees the flames rising in the 
air from the galley of Ajax. He can no longer restrain 
his feelings, but hurries his comrade forth. Patroclus 
puts on the harness of his chief, and takes his sword 
and shield : only the mighty spear he forbears to 
touch ; — 

" None save Achilles' self that spear could poise, 
The far-famed Pelian ash, which to his sire, 
On Pelion's summit felled, to be the bane 
Of mightiest chiefs, the centaur Chiron gave." 

He mounts the hero's chariot, driven by the noblo 
Automedon, and drawn by the three horses, Xanthus, 
Balius, and Pedasus — or as we should call therm. 
Chestnut, Dapple, and Swift-foot. The battalions 
of the Myrmidons eagerly gather round their leaders, — 
even old Phoenix taking command of one detachment. 
Achilles himself gives them a few fiery words of ex- 
hortation. " They have long chafed at their enforced 
idleness, and clamoured for the battle ; lo ! there lies 
the opportunity they have longed for." Then, standing 
in the midst, he pours from his most costly goblet the 
solemn libation to Jove, and prays of him for Patroclus 
victory and a safe return. The poet tells us, with that 
licence of prognostication which has been considerably 
abused by some modern writers of fiction, that half the 
prayer was heard, and half denied. 

" Like a pack of ravening wolves, hungering for their 
prey," the Myrmidons launch themselves against the 
enemy. The Trojans recognise, as they believe, in the 
armed charioteer who heads them, the terrible Achilles, 
and consternation spreads through their ranks. Even 
Hector, though still fighting gallantly, is borne back 
over the stockade, and the ditch is filled with broken 



TEE DEATH OF PATROCLUS. 115 

chariots and struggling horses. Back towards the Tro- 
jan lines rolls the tide of battle. Sarpedon, the great 
Lycian chief, own son to Jupiter, falls by the spear of 
Patroclus. The rulerof Olympus has hesitatedfor awhile 
whether he shall interpose to save him ; but his fated 
term of life is come, and there is a mysterious Destiny 
in this Homeric mythology, against which even Jupiter 
seems powerless. All that he can do for his offspring 
is to insure for his body the rites of burial ; and by 
his order the twin brothers, Sleep and Death, carry off 
the corpse to his native shore of Lycia. 

But Patroclus has forgotten the parting caution of 
Achilles. Flushed with his triumph, he follows up 
the pursuit even to the walls of Troy. But there 
Apollo keeps guard. Thrice the Greek champion in 
defiance smites upon the battlements, and thrice the 
god shakes the terrible iEgis in his face. A fourth 
time the Greek lifts his spear, when an awful voice 
warns him that neither for him, nor yet for his 
mightier master Achilles, is it written in the fates to 
take Troy. Awe-struck, he draws back from the wall, 
but only to continue his career of slaughter among the 
Trojans. Apollo meets him in the field, strips from 
him his helmet and his armour, and shivers his spear 
in his hand. The Trojan Euphorbus, seeing him at 
this disadvantage, stabs him from behind, and Hector, 
following him as he retreats, drives his spear through 
his body. As the Trojan prince stands over his vic- 
tim, exulting after the fashion of all Homeric heroes m 
what seems to our taste a barbarous and boastful spirit, 
Patroclus with his dying breath foretells that his slayer 
shall speedily meet his own fate by the avenging hand 
of Achilles. Hector spurns the prophecy, and rushes 



116 TUB ILIAD. 

after the charioteer Automedon, whom the immortal 
horses carry off safe from his pursuit. Then donning the 
armour of Achilles, so lately worn by Patroclus, he 
leads on the Trojans to seize the dead body, which 
Menelaus is gallantly defending. After a long and 
desperate contest, the Greeks, locking their shields 
together in close phalanx, succeed in carrying it off, 
the two Ajaxes keeping the assailants at bay. Jupiter, 
in pity to the dead hero, casts a veil of darkness round 
him. But this embarrasses the movements of friends 
as well as enemies, and gives rise to a characteristic 
outburst on the part of Ajax, often quoted. He can 
fight best when he sees his way. " Give us but light, 
Jove, and in the light, if thou seest fit, destroy us !" 
We have nowreached the crisis of the story. The wrath 
of Achilles against Agamemnon wanes and pales before 
the far more bitter wrath which now fills his whole soul 
against Hector, as the slayer of his comrade. Young 
Antilochus, son of Nestor, brings the mournful tidings 
to his tent, where he sits already foreboding the result, 
as he sees the Greeks crowding back to their galleys 
from the field in front of Troy. His grief is frantic — 
he tears his hair, and heaps dust upon his head, after a 
fashion which strongly suggests the Eastern character 
of the tale. His goddess-mother, Thetis " of the silver 
feet," hears him, 

"Beside her aged father where she sat, 
In the deep ocean- caves," 

and comes with all her train of sea-nymphs to console 
him, as when before he sat weeping with indignation at 
the insult of Agamemnon. In vain she strives to com- 
fort him with the thought that his insulted honour has 
been fully satisfied — that the Greeks have bitterly rued 



TEE DEATH OF PATROCLUS. 117 

their former treatment of him. He feels only the loss 
of Patroclus, and curses the hour in which he was born. 
All that he longs for now is vengeance upon Hector. 
Thetis sorrowfully reminds him that it is written in the 
hook of fate that when Hector falls, his own last hour 
is near at hand. Be it so, is his reply — death comes 
in turn to all men, and he will meet it as he may. But 
he cannot go forth to battle without armour ; and the 
goddess promises that by the morrow's dawn, Yulcan, 
the immortal craftsman, shall furnish him with harness 
of proof. 

The Greeks have fought their way to their vessels, 
step by step, with the dead body of Patroclus. But 
Hector with his Trojans has pressed them close all 
the way, and even when at the Greek lines seizes the 
corpse by the feet. Iris flies to Achilles with a message 
from Juno — will he see his dead friend given as a prey 
to the dogs and vultures ? — He is without armour, true ; 
but there is no need for him to adventure himself among 
the combatants ; let him only show himself, let the 
Trojans but hear his voice, and it is enough. He does so; 
standing aloft upon the rampart, while Pallas throws 
her aegis over him, and surrounds his head with a halo 
of flashing light, he lifts his mighty voice and thrice 
shouts aloud. Panic seizes the whole host of Troy, 
and while they give ground in dismay, the dead Pa- 
troclus is borne off to the tent of Achilles. 

Xight falls on the plain, and separates the combat- 
ants. The Trojans, before their evening meal, hold an 
anxious council, in which Polydamas, as great in debate 
as Hector is in the field, advises that they should now 
retire within their walls. Achilles, it is evident, will 
head the Greeks in the morning, and who shall stand 



118 THE ILIAD. 

before liim ? But the wise counsel of Polydamas meets 
the same fate as that of Ahithophel; Heaven will not 
suffer men to listen to it. Minerva perverts the under- 
standings of the Trojans, and they prefer the rasher 
exhortations of Hector, who urges them at all hazards 
to keep the field. 

Thetis, meanwhile, has sought out Vulcan, and be- 
spoken his skill in the forging of new armour for her 
son. The lame god will work for her, she knows ; for 
in the day when his cruel mother Juno, in wrath at 
his marvellous ugliness, cast him down from Olympus, 
she with her sister-goddess Eurynome had nursed him 
in their bosom till he grew strong. She finds him now 
hard at work at his forges, in the brazen halls which 
he has made for himself in heaven. He is completing 
at this moment some marvellous machinery — twenty 
tripods mounted on wheels of gold (the earliest hint 
of velocipedes), which are to move of themselves, and 
carry him to and fro to the assembly of the gods. 
Another marvel, too, is to be seen in the Fire-king's 
establishment, which has long been the desideratum of 
modern households, but which modern mechanical sci- 
ence has as yet failed to invent — automaton servants^ 
worked by machinery. 

' ' In form as living maids, but wrought in gold, 
Instinct with consciousness, with voice endued, 
And strength, and skill from heavenly teachers drawn ; 
These waited duteous at the monarch's side." 

Willingly, at the request of the sea-goddess, Vulcan 
plies his immortal art. Helmet with crest of gold, 
breastplate " brighter than the flash of fire, ,, and the 
pliant greaves that mould themselves to the limb, are 
soon completed. But the marvel of marvels is the 



THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS. H9 

shield. On this the god bestows all his skill, and the 
poet his most graphic description. It is covered "with 
figures of the most elaborate design, wrought in brass, 
and tin, and gold, and silver. In its centre are the sun, 
the moon, and all the host of heaven : round the rim 
flows the mighty ocean-river, which in Homeric as in 
Eastern mythology encompasses the earth ; and on its 
embossed surface, crowded with figures, is embodied an 
epitome of human life, such as life was in the days of 
Homer. The tale is told in twelve compartments, con- 
taining each a scene of peace or war. Three groups 
represent a city in time of peace : a wedding procession 
with music and dancing, a dispute in the market-place, 
and a reference to the judgment of the elders gathered 
in council. Three represent a city in time of war : a 
siege, an ambuscade, and a battle. Then follow three 
scenes of outdoor country life : ploughing, the harvest, 
and the vintage. The lord of the harvest stands looking 
on at his reapers, like Boaz. In the vintage scene, the 
art of the immortal workman is minutely described. 
The vines are wrought in gold, the props are of silver, 
the grape-bunches are of a purple black, and there is a 
trench round of some dark-hued metal, crowned by a 
palisade of bright tin. Three pastoral groups complete 
the circle. First, a herd of oxen with herdsmen and 
their dogs, attacked by lions ; secondly, flocks feeding 
in a deep valley, with the folds and shepherds' huts in 
the distance ; and lastly, a festival dance of men and 
maidens in holiday attire, with the " divine bard," 
without whom no festival is complete, singing his lays 
to his harp in the midst, and two gymnasts performing 
their feats for the amusement of the crowd of lookers- 
on. If any reader should have imagined that Homer s 



120 THE ILIAD. 

song of (it may be) three thousand years ago was rude 
and inartistic, he has hut to read, in the version of any 
of our best translators, this description of the Shield 
of Achilles, to be convinced that the poet understood 
his work to the full as well as the immortal craftsman 
whom he represents as having wrought it. We need 
not trouble ourselves with the difficulty of that French 
critic, who doubted whether so many subjects could 
really be represented on any shield of manageable size 
— like Goldsmith's rustics who marvelled, in the case 
of the village schoolmaster, 

"That one small head could carry aU he knew." 

It is only necessary to point to the clever design of 
Flaxman for its realisation, and its actual embodiment 
(with the moderate diameter of three feet) in the shield 
cast by Pitts. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE RETURN OF ACHILLES. 

With a fierce deliglit Achilles gazes on the work of 

the Olympian armourer, before the dazzling brightness 

of which even the Myrmidons veil their faces. He sets 

forth at once for the tents of Agamemnon ; and, taking 

his way along the shore, calls the leaders to battle as 

he passes each man's galley. The news of his coming 

spreads fast and far, and every man, from the highest 

to the lowest, even those who never quitted the ship 

on any other occasion — 

" The steersmen who the vessels' rudders hold, 
The very stewards who served the daily bread" — 

flock to the central rendezvous to welcome back the 
champion of the Achseans. He is as impulsive and 
outspoken in his reconciliation as in his wrath. There 
is no need of mediation now between himself and Aga- 
memnon. He accosts the king with a noble simplicity : 

' ' Great son of Atreus, what hath been the gain 
To thee or me, since heart-consuming strife 
Hath fiercely raged between us, for a girl — 
Who would to heaven had died by Dian's shafts 
That day when from Lyrnessus' captured town 
I bore her off, so had not many a Greek 
Bitten the bloody dust, by hostile hands 



122 THE ILIAD. 

Subdued, while I in anger stood aloof. 

Great was the gain to Troy ; but Greece, methinks, 

Will long retain the memory of our feud. 

Yet pass we that ; and' though our hearts be sore, 

Still let us school our angry spirits down. 

My wrath I here abjure." (D.) 

Agamemnon, for his part, magnanimously admits his 
error ; laying the chief blame, however, upon Jupiter 
and Fate, who blinded the eyes of his understanding. 
The peace-offerings are produced and accepted, though 
Achilles only chafes at anything which can delay his 
vengeance. Ulysses strongly urges the necessity of a 
substantial meal for the whole army ; 

' ' For none throughout the day till set of sun, 
Fasting from food, may bear the toils of war ; 
His spirit may be eager for the fray, 
Yet are his limbs by slow degrees weighed down. " 

Achilles schools himself into patience while the rest 
act upon this prosaic but prudent counsel; but for 
himself, he will neither eat nor drink, nor wash his 
blood-stained hands, till he has avenged the death oi 
his comrade. So he sits apart in his grief, while the 
rest are at the banquet : Minerva, by Jupiter's com- 
mand, infusing into his body ambrosia and nectar, to 
sustain his strength. Another true mourner is Briseis. 
The first sight which meets the captive princess on her 
return to the Myrmidon camp is the bloody corpse of 
Patroclus. She throws herself upon it in an agony 
of tears. He, in the early days of her captivity, had 
spoken kind and cheering words, and had been a friend 
in time of trouble. So, too, Menelaus briefly says of 
him — "He knew how to be kind to all men." This 
glimpse which the poet gives us of the gentler features 
of the dead warrior's character is touching enough, when 



THE RETURN OF ACHILLES. 123 

we remember the utter disregard of an enemy's or a 
captive's feelings shown not only by Homer's heroes, 
but by those of the older Jewish Scriptures. 

When all is ready for the battle, Achilles dons the 
armour of Yulcan, and draws from its case the Centaur's 
gift, — the ashen spear of Mount Pelion, which even Pa- 
troclus, it wull be remembered, had not ventured to take 
in hand. Thus armed, he mounts his chariot, drawn by 
the two immortal steeds, Xanthus and Balius — for 
their mortal yoke-fellow had been slain in the battle 
in which Patroclus fell. As he mounts, in the bitter 
spirit which leads him to blame the whole world for 
the death of his friend, he cannot forbear a taunt to his 
horses — he trusts they will not leave him on the field, 
as they left Patroclus. Then the chestnut, inspired by 
Juno, for once finds a human voice, and exculpates 
himself and his comrade. It was no fault of theirs ; 
it was the doom of Patroclus, and Achilles' own doom 
draws nigh. This day they will bring him back in 
safety ; but the end is at hand. 

Unlike Hector, Achilles knows and foresees his doom 
clearly; but, like Hector, he will meet it unflinchingly. 
Pope's version of his reply is deservedly admired. 
Xanthus has uttered his warning; 

" Then ceased for ever, by the Furies tied, 
His fateful voice. TV intrepid chief replied 
With unabated rage — ' So let it be ! 
Portents and prodigies are lost on me ; 
I know my fate ; to die, to see no more 
My much-loved parents and my native shore ; 
Enough — when Heaven ordains, I sink in night ; 
Now perish Troy ! ' he said, and rushed to fight." 

In the renewed battle which ensues,- the gods, 
by express permission of their sovereign, take part. 



124 THE ILIAD. 

Juno, Xeptune, Minerva, Mercury, and Yulcan assist 
the Greeks : Mars, Venus, Apollo, Latona, and Diana 
join the Trojans. Their interference seems, at least to 
our modern taste, to assist in no Tray the action of the 
poem, and merely tends to -weaken for the time the 
human interest. We must be content to assume that 
upon a Greek audience the impression was different. 
The only effect which these immortal allies produce 
upon the fortunes of the day is a negative one; Apollo 
incites ./Eneas to encounter Achilles, and when he is 
in imminent danger, Xeptune conveys him away in a 
mist. Apollo performs the same office for Hector, 
who also engages the same terrible adversary, in the 
hope of avenging upon him the death of his young 
brother Polydorus. Disappointed in both his greater 
antagonists, Achilles vents his wrath in indiscriminate 
slaughter. Driving through the disordered host of the 
Trojans, his chariot wheels and axle steeped in blood, 
he cuts the mass of fugitives in two, and drives part of 
them into the shallows of the river Scamander. Leap- 
ing down from his chariot, he wades into the river, 
and there continues his career of slaughter, sword in 
hand. Twelve Trojan youths he takes alive and hands 
them over to his followers ; sparing them for the present 
only to slay them hereafter as victims at the funeral- 
pile to appease the shade of Patroclus. Another sup- 
pliant for his mercy has a singular history. The young 
Lycaon, one of the many sons of Priam, had been 
taken prisoner by him in one of his raids upon Trojan 
territory, and sold as a slave in Lemnos. He had been 
ransomed there and sent home to Troy, only twelve 
days before he fell into his enemy's hands again here in 
the bed of the Scamander. Achilles recognises him, 



THE RETURN OF ACHILLES. 125 

and cruelly taunts him with his reappearance : the dead 

Trojans whom he has slain will surely next come to 

life again, if the captives thus cross the seas to swell 

the ranks of his enemies. In vain Lycaon pleads for 

his life, that he is not the son of the same mother as 

Hector — that his brother Polydorus has just been slain, 

which may well content the Greek's vengeance. There 

is a gloomy irony in the words with which Achilles 

rejects his prayer. Before Patroclus fell, he had spared 

many a Trojan ; but henceforth, all appeal to his mercy 

is vain — most of all from a son of Priam. But, in 

fact, the wish to escape one's fate he holds to be 

utterly unreasonable; 

" Thou too, my friend, must die— why vainly wail ? 
Dead is Patroclus too, thy better far— 
Me too thou seest, how stalwart, tall, and fair, 
Of noble sire and goddess-mother born, 
Yet must I yield to death and stubborn fate, 
Whene'er, at morn or noon or eve, the spear 
Or arrow from the bow may reach my life." (D.) 

At last the great river-god — whom the gods call Xan- 
thus, but men Scamander — rises in his might, indig- 
nant at seeing his stream choked with corpses, and 
stained with blood. He hurls the whole force of his 
waves against Achilles, and the hero is fain to save 
himself by grasping an elm that overhangs the bank, 
and so swinging himself to land. But here Scamander 
pursues him, and, issuing from his banks, rolls in a 
deluge over the plain. Even the soul of Achilles is 
terror-stricken at this new aspect of death. Is he to 
die thus, like some vile churl — 

" Borne down in crossing by a wintry brook?" 
Neptune and Minerva appear to encourage him, and give 
him strength to battle with the flood : and when Sea- 



126 THE ILIAD. 

mander summons liis brother-river Simois to his aid, 
Vulcan sends flames that scorch all the river-banks, 
consuming the trees and shrubs that clothe them, and 
threatening to dry up the very streams themselves. The 
river yields, and retires to his banks, leaving Achilles 
free to pursue his victories. He drives the Trojans in- 
side their walls, and but that Apollo guards the gates, 
would have entered the city in hot pursuit. Hector 
alone remains without — his doom is upon him. 

The gods, meanwhile, have entered the field of 
battle on their own account, and contributed, as before, 
a ludicrous element to the action of the poem. Minerva 
fells Mars the war-god to the ground with a huge mass 
of rock, an ancient landmark, which she hurls against 
him ; and he lies covering " above seven hundred feet," 
till Venus comes to his aid to lead him from the field, 
when the terrible goddess strikes her to the earth be- 
side him. Juno shows the strength of those "white 
arms" which the poet always assigns to her, by a 
terrible buffet which she bestows, for no particular 
reason apparently, upon Diana, who drops her bow 
and loses her arrows, and flies weeping to her father 
Jupiter. He, for his part, has been watching the 
quarrels of his court and family with a dignified amuse- 
ment ; — 

il Jove as his sport the dreadful scene descries, 
And views contending gods with careless eyes." (P.) 

Those philosophers who see a moral allegory in the 
whole of the Homeric story, have supplied us with a 
key to the conduct and feelings of Jupiter during this 
curious combat. " Jupiter, as the lord of nature, is 
well pleased with the war of the gods — that is, of 
earth, sea, air, &c. — because the harmony of all beings 



THE RETURN OF ACHILLES. 127 

arises from that discord. Thus heat arid cold, moist 
and dry, are in a continual war, yet upon this depends 
the fertility of the earth and the beauty of the creation. 
So that Jupiter, who, according to the Greeks, is the 
soul' of all, may well he said to smile at this conten- 
tion."* Those readers who may not be satisfied with 
this solution must be content to take the burlesque as 
it stands. 

* Eustathius, as quoted by Pope. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE DEATH OF HECTOR. 

Hector remains alone outside the Scsean gate, await- 
ing his great enemy. In vain his aged father and 
mother from the walls entreat him to take shelter 
within, like the rest of his countrymen. He will not 
meet the just reproach of Polydamas, whose prudent 
counsel he rejected. The deaths of his friends who 
have fallen in this terrible battle, which he had insisted 
upon their risking, hang heavy on his soul. He, at 
least, will do what he may for Troy. Yet he has no 
confidence in the result of the encounter. If he were 
only sure that Achilles would listen, he would even now 
offer to restore Helen, and so end this disastrous war. 
But he feels it is too late; vengeance alone will now 
content Achilles. 

" Not this the time, nor he the man with whom 
By forest oak or rock, like youth and maid, 
To hold light talk as youth and maid might hold. 
Better to dare the fight, and know at once 
For whom the vict'ry is decreed by Heaven. " 

Achilles draws near. The courage which has never 
failed Hector before, wholly deserts him now ; he turns 
and flies, t; like a dove from the falcon." Judged by 



THE DEATH OF HECTOR. 129 

any theory of modern heroism, his conduct is simply 
indefensible. Critics tell us that the poet, in order to 
enhance the glory of his chief hero, makes even the 
champion of Troy fear to face him. But it is no com- 
pliment, in our modern eyes, to a victorious warrior, to 
.have it explained that his crowning victory was won 
over a coward. Yet perhaps there was something of 
this feeling maintained even by Englishmen in days 
not so very long gone by, when it was the popular 
fashion to represent Frenchmen generally, and the 
great French general in particular, as always running 
away from the English bayonets. However, to Homer's 
public it was evidently not incongruous or derogatory 
to the heroic type of character, that sudden panic 
should seize even the bravest in the presence of superior 
force. Hector, as has been said, turns and flies for his 
life. 

Thrice round the walls of the city, his friends look- 
ing on in horror at the terrible race, he flies, with 
Achilles in pursuit. In each course he tries to reach 
the gates, that his comrades may either open to him, 
or at least cover him by launching their missiles from 
the walls against his enemy. But still Achilles turns 
him back towards the plain, signing to the Greeks to 
hurl no spear, nor to interfere in any way with his 
single vengeance. The gods look down from Olympus 
with divided interest. Jupiter longs to save him \ but 
Minerva sternly reminds him of the dread destiny — the 
Eternal Law — which even the Ruler of Olympus is 
bound to reverence. Once more he lifts in heaven the 
golden scales, and finds that Hector's fate weighs down 
the balance. Then, at last, his guardian Apollo leaves 
him. Minerva, on her part, comes to the aid of her 

l 



130 THE ILIAD. 

favourite Achilles with, a stratagem, as little worthy of 
his renown (to our view) as the sudden panic of Hector. 
She appears by the side of the Trojan hero in the like- 
ness of his brother Deiphobus, and bids him stand and 
fight ; they two, together, must surely be a match for 
Achilles. Hector turns and challenges his adversary. 
One compact he tries to make, in a few hurried words, 
before they encounter ; let each promise, since one 
must fall, to restore the dead body of his enemy in all 
honour to his kindred. Achilles makes no reply but 
this : — 

" Talk not to me of compacts ; as 'tween men 
And lions no firm concord can exist, 
Nor wolves and lambs in harmony unite, 
But ceaseless enmity between them dwells : 
So not in friendly terms, nor compact firm, 
Can thou and I unite, till one of us 
Glut with his blood the mail-clad warrior Mars. 
Mind thee of all thy fence ; behoves thee now 
To prove a spearman skilled, and warrior brave. 
For thee escape is none ; now, by my spear, 
Hath Pallas doomed thy death : my comrade's blood, 
Which thou hast shed, shall all be now avenged." (D.) 

The spear launched with these words misses its 
mark : that of Hector strikes full in the centre of his 
enemy's shield, but it glances harmlessly off from the 
fire-god's workmanship. He looks round for Deipho- 
bus to hand him another ; but the false Deiphobus has 
vanished, and, too late, Hector detects the cruel deceit 
of the goddess. He will die at least as a hero should. 
He draws his sword, and rushes on Achilles. The wary 
Greek eyes him carefully as he comes on, and spies the 
joint in his harness where the breastplate meets the 
throat. Through that fatal spot he drives his spear, 
and the Trojan falls to the ground mortally wounded, 



THE DEATH OF HECTOR. 131 

tut yet preserving the power of speech. As his con- 
queror stands over him cruelly vaunting, and vowing 
to give his body to the dogs and to the vultures, he 
makes a last appeal to his mercy. " By the heads of 
his parents " he beseeches him to spare this last indig- 
nity ; the ransom which his father Priam will offer 
shall be ample for one poor corpse. But the wrath of 
Achilles has become for the present mere savage mad- 
ness. Neither prayer nor ransom shall avail in this 
matter. Hector's last words are prophetic : — 

" I know thee well, nor did I hope 
To change thy purpose ; iron is thy soul. 
But see that on thy head I bring not down 
The wrath of heaven, when by the Scsean gate 
The hand of Paris, with Apollo's aid, 
Brave warrior as thou art, shall strike thee down." (D.) 

The only glimpse of nobility which Achilles shows 

throughout the whole scene is in his stoical answer : — 

" Die thou ! my fate I then shall meet, whene'er 
Jove and th' immortal gods shall so decree. " 

What follows is mere brutality. The Greeks crowd 
round, and drive their weapons into the senseless 
body. 

" And one to other looked, and said, ' Good faith, 

Hector is easier far to handle now, 

Than when erewhile he wrapped our ships in fire.' " 

Does it need here to do more than recall the too well 

remembered sequel — how the savage victor pierced the 

heels of his dead enemy, and so fastened the body to 

his chariot, and dragged him off to his ships, in full 

sight of his agonised parents J how 

" A cloud of dust the trailing body raised ; 
Loose hung his glossy hair ; and in the dust 
Was laid that noble head, so graceful once." 



132 THE ILIAD. 

Or how the miserable Priam, grovelling on the floor of 
his palace, besought his weeping friends to surfer him 
to rush out of the gates, and implore the mercy of the 
merciless Achilles % Less horrible, if not less piteous, 
is the picture of Andromache : — 

" To "her no messenger 
Had brought the tidings, that without the walls 
Remained her husband ; in her house withdrawn, 
A web she wove, all purple, double woof, 
"With varied flowers in rich embroidery, 
And to her neat-haired maids she gave command 
To place the largest caldrons on the fires, 
That with warm baths, returning from the fight, 
Hector might be refreshed ; unconscious she, 
That by Achilles' hand, with Pallas' aid, 
Far from the bath, was godlike Hector slain. 
The sounds of wailing reached her from the tower. 

******* 
Then from the house she rushed, like one distract, 
With beating heart ; and with her went her maids. 
But when the tower she reached, where stood the crowd, 
And mounted on the wall, and looked around, 
And saw the body trailing in the dust, 
Which the fleet steeds were dragging to the ships, 
A sudden darkness overspread her eyes ; 
Backward she fell, and gasped her spirit away. 
Far off were flung th' adornments of her head, 
The net, the fillet, and the woven bands ; 
The nuptial veil by golden Venus given, 
That day when Hector of the glancing helm. 
Led from Eetion's house his wealthy bride. 
The sisters of her husband round her pressed, 
And held, as in the deadly swoon she lay." (D.) 

The body is dragged off to the ships, and flung in 
the dust in front of the bier on which Patroclus lies. 
And now, at last, when he has been fully avenged, the 
due honours shall be paid to his beloved remains, while 
the dogs and vultures feast on those of Hector. Thrice 
in slow procession, with a mournful chant, the Myrmi- 



THE DEATH OF HECTOR. 133 

dons lead their horses round the bier. While Achilles 
sleeps the deep sleep of exhaustion after the long day's 
battle, the shade of his dead friend appears to him, 
and chides him for leaving him so long unburied, a 
wandering ghost in the gloom below. 

" Sleep'st thou, Achilles, mindless of thy friend, 
Neglecting not the living, but the dead? 
Hasten my fun'ral rites, that I may pass 
Through Hades' gloomy gates ; ere those be done, 
The spirits and spectres of departed men 
Drive me far from them, nor allow to cross 
Th' abhorred river ; but forlorn and sad 
I wander through the widespread realms of night. 
And give me now thy hand, whereon to weep ; 
For never more, when laid upon the pyre, 
Shall I return from Hades ; never more, 
Apart from all our comrades, shall we two, 
As friends, sweet counsel take ; for me, stern Death, 
The common lot of man, has ope'd his mouth ; 
Thou too, Achilles, rival of the gods, 
Art destined here beneath the walls of Troy 
To meet thy doom ; yet one thing must I add, 
And make, if thou wilt grant it, one request : 
Let not my bones be laid apart from thine, 
Achilles, but together, as our youth 
Was spent together in thy father's house." (D.) 

As eager now to do honour to Achilles as he was 
before to insult him, Agamemnon has despatched a 
strong force at early dawn to cut down wood for a huge 
funeral pile. The burial rites are grandly savage. In 
long procession and in full panoply the Myrmidons 
bear the dead hero to the pile, and the corpse is covered 
with the long locks of hair which every warrior in turn, 
Achilles first, cuts off as an offering to the gods below. 
Four chariot-horses, and two dogs " that had fed at 
their master's board," are slain upon the pile, to follow 
him, in case he should have need of them, into the dark 



134 TEE ILIAD. 

ajid unknown country : and last, the twelve Trojan 
captives, according to his barbarous vow, are slaugh- 
tered by Achilles in person, and laid upon the pile. 
The winds of heaven are solemnly invoked to fan the 
flames, which roar and blaze all night ; and all night 
Achilles pours copious libations of wine from a golden 
goblet. With wine also the embers are quenched in 
the morning, and the bones of Patroclus are carefully 
collected and placed in a golden urn, to await the day, 
which Achilles foresees close at hand, when they shall 
be buried under one mound with his own. 

There follow the funeral games. First, the chariot- 
race, in which Diomed carries off an easy victory with 
the Trojan horses which he captured from iEneas. An 
easy victory, because the goddess Minerva not only 
breaks the pole of Eumelus, his most formidable rival, 
but hands Diomed back his whip when he drops it : in- 
terpreted by our realistic critics to mean, that prudence 
bids him take a second whip as a reserve. The old 
" horse-tamer/' Xestor, gives his son Antilochus such 
cunning directions, that he comes in second, though 
Ins horses are confessedly the slowest of the wholo 
field. Next comes the battle with the ccestus — that 
barbarous form of boxing-glove, which, far from dead- 
ening the force of the blow delivered, made it more 
damaging and dangerous, inasmuch as the padding con- 
sisted of thongs of raw ox-hide well hardened. The 
combat in this case is very unequal, since the giant 
Epeius speedily fells his younger and lighter antagon- 
ist, who is carried almost senseless from the lists. The 
wrestlers are better matched ; the skill and subtlety of 
Ulysses are a counterpoise to the huge bulk and some- 
what inactive strength of Ajax, who lifts his opponent 



THE DEATH OF HECTOR. 135 

off his feet with ease, but is brought to the ground him- 
self by a dexterous kick upon the ancle-joint. Another 
fall, in which neither has the advantage, leads to the 
dividing of the prize — though how it was to be divided 
practically is not so clear, since the first prize was a 
tripod valued at twelve oxen, and the second a female 
captive, reckoned to be worth four.* The foot-race is 
won by Ulysses, Minerva interfering for the second 
time to secure the victory for her favourite, by trip- 
ping up the lesser Ajax (son of Oileus), who was lead- 
ing. The Greek poet does but refer what we should 
call an unlucky accident to the agency of heaven. A 
single combat on foot, with shield and spear, suc- 
ceeds, the prize for which is the rich armour of which 
Patroclus had spoiled Sarpedon. He who first draws 
blood is to be the winner. Diomed and Ajax Tela- 
mon step into the lists, and the combat between the 
two great champions grows so fierce and hot, that the 
spectators insist on their being separated, and again 
the honours are adjudged to be equal ; although Dio- 

* Madame Dacier's remarks on this valuation, and Pope's 
note upon them, are amusing : — 

"I cannot in civility neglect a remark made upon this pass- 
age by Madame Dacier, who highly resents the affront put upon 
her sex by the ancients, who set (it seems) thrice the value upon 
a tripod as upon a beautiful female slave. Nay, she is afraid, 
the value of women is not raised even in our days ; for she says 
there are curious persons now living who had rather have a true 
antique kettle than the finest woman alive. I confess I entirely 
agree with the lady, and must impute such opinions of the fair 
sex to want of taste in both ancients and moderns. The reader 
may remember that these tripods were of no use, but made 
entirely for show ; and consequently the most satirical critick 
could only say, the woman and tripod ought to have borne an 
equal value." 



136 THE ILIAD. 

med, who was clearly getting the advantage, receives the 
chief portion of the divided prize. In the quoit-throw- 
ing Ajax is "beaten easily; and critics have remarked that 
in no single contest does the poet allow him, though a 
favourite with the army, to be successful. Those who 
insist upon the allegorical view of the poem, tell us that 
the lesson is, that brute force is of little avail without 
counsel. The archers' prizes are next contended for, 
and we have the original of the story which has been 
borrowed, with some modifications, by many imitators 
from Virgil's time downwards, and figures in the history 
of the English ' Clym of the dough/ and Tell of 
Switzerland. Teucer, reputed the most skilful bowman 
in the whole host, only shoots near enough to cut the 
cord which ties the dove to the mast, while Meriones 
follows the bird with his aim as she soars far into the 
air, and brings her down, pierced through and through, 
with his arrow. But Meriones had vowed an offering 
to Apollo " of the silver bow," which Teucer, in the 
pride of his heart, had neglected. The games are closed 
with hurling the spear, when the king Agamemnon 
himself, desirous to pay all honour to his great rival's 
grief, steps into the arena as a competitor. "With no 
less grace and dignity Achilles accepts the compliment, 
but forbids the contest. " son of Atreus, we know 
thou dost far surpass us all" — and he hands the prize for 
his acceptance. 

The anger against Agamemnon is past : but not so 
the savage wrath against Hector. Combined with his 
passionate grief for Patroclus, it amounts to madness. 
Morning after morning he rises from the restless couch 
where he has lain thinking of his friend, and lashing 
the dead corpse afresh to his chariot, drags it furiously 



THE DEATH OF HECTOR. 137 

thrice round the mound that covers Patroclus' ashes. 
Twelve days has the "body now lain unhuried ; but 
Venus and Apollo preserve it from decay. Yenus 
sheds over it ambrosial roseate unguents, and Apollo 
covers it with a dark cool cloud. In less mythological 
language, the loathliness of death may not mar its 
beauty, nor the sunbeams breed in it corruption. 
Even the Olympians are seized with horror and pity. 
In spite of the remonstrances of his still implacable 
queen, Jupiter instructs Thetis to visit her son. and 
soften his cruel obduracy. At the same time he sends 
Iris to Priam, and persuades him to implore Achilles 
in person to restore the body of his son. Accompanied 
by a single herald, and bearing a rich ransom, the aged 
king passes the Greek lines by night (for Mercury 
himself becomes his guide, disguised in the form of a 
Greek straggler, and casts a deep sleep upon the senti- 
nels). He reaches the tent of Achilles, who has just 
ended his evening meal, throws himself at his feet ; and 
kisses "the dreadful murderous hands by which so 
many of his sons have fallen," in an agony of supplica- 
tion. He adjures the conqueror, by the thought of his 
own aged father Peleus — now looking and longing for 
his return — to have some pity on a bereaved old man, 
whose son can never return to him alive ; and at least 
to give him back the body. 

" And for thy father's sake look pitying down 
On me, more needing pity : since I bear 
Such grief as never man on earth hath borne, 
Who stoop to kiss the hand that slew my son." 

With the impulsive suddenness which is a part of 
his character, Achilles gives way at once — prepared, 
indeed, to yield, by his mother's remonstrances. He 



138 THE ILIAD. 

gives orders to have the "body clothed in costly raiment, 
and washed and anointed by the handmaidens ; nay, 
even lifts his dead enemy with his own hands, and 
lays him on a conch. Yet he will not let Priam as yet 
look npon the corpse, lest at the sight of his grief 
his own passion should break out afresh. The father 
spends the night in the tent of his son's slayer, and 
there he closes his eyes in sleep for the first time since 
the day of Hector's death. In the morning he returns 
to Troy with his mournful burden, and the funeral 
rites of Hector close the poem. The boon which 
Achilles has granted he makes complete by the spon- 
taneous offer of twelve days' truce, that so Troy may 
bury her dead hero with his rightful honours. The 
wailings of Priam and Hecuba, though naturally ex- 
pressed, are but commonplace compared with the last 
tribute of the remorseful Helen : — 

" Hector, of all my brethren dearest thou ! 
True, godlike Paris claims me as his wife, 
Who bore me hither — would I then had died ! 
But twenty years have passed since here I came, 
And left my native land ; yet ne'er from thee 
I heard one scornful, one degrading word ; 
And when from others I have borne reproach, 
Thy brothers, sister, or thy brothers' wives, 
Or mother (for thy sire was ever kind 
Even as a father), thou hast checked them still 
With tender feeling and with gentle words. 
For thee I weep, and for myself no less, 
For through the breadth of Troy none love me now, 
None kindly look on me, but all abhor." (D.) 



CHAPTEE XL 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



The character of Hector has been very differently 
estimated. Modern writers upon Homer generally as- 
sume that the ancient bard had, as it were, a mental 
picture of all his great heroes before him, of their inner 
as well as of their outer man, and worked from this in 
the various acts and speeches which he has assigned to 
each. Probably nothing could be further from the 
truth. If the poet could be questioned as to his im- 
mortal work, and required to give a detailed character 
of each of his chief personages, such as his modern 
admirers present us with, he would most likely confess 
that such character as his heroes possess was built up 
by degrees, as occasion called for them to act and 
speak, and that his own portraits (where they were 
not derived from the current traditions) rested but 
little upon any preconceived ideal. It is very difficult 
to estimate character at all in a work of fiction in 
which the principles of conduct are in many respects 
so different from those of our own age. How far even 
the ablest critics have succeeded in the attempt in the 
case of Hector may be judged from this ; that whereas 
Colonel Mure speaks of " a turn for vainglorious boast- 



140 THE ILIAD. 

ing " as his characteristic defect,* Mr Froude remarks 
that' " while Achilles is all pride, Hector is all mo- 
desty." t Both criticisms are from writers of competent 
taste and jndgment ; but both cannot possibly be true- 
There can be no doubt that Hector makes a consider- 
able number of vaunting speeches in the course of the 
poem — vaunts which he does not always carry out; 
but in this respect he differs rather in degree than in 
principle from most of the other warriors, Greek as 
well as Trojan ; and if the boasts of Achilles are 
always made good, while Hector's often come to no- 
thing, that follows almost necessarily from the fact 
that Achilles is the hero of the tale. A boastful 
tongue and a merciless spirit are attributes of the 
heroic character in Homer : his heroes bear a singular 
resemblance in these two points to the " braves " of the 
American Indians \ while they are utterly unlike them 
in their sensitiveness to physical pain, their undis- 
guised horror of death, and their proneness to give 
loud expression to both feelings. Without attempting 
to sketch a full-length portrait, which probably Homer 
himself would not recognise, it may be said that Hec- 
tor interests us chiefly because he is far more human 
than Achilles, in his weakness as well as in his strength; 
his honest love for his wife and child, his pitying con- 
donation of Helen, his half-contemptuous kindness £<5 
his weak brother Paris, his hearty and unselfish devo- 
tion to his country. Achilles is the " hero," indeed, 
in the classical sense — i.e., he is the demi-god, superior 
to many of the mortal weaknesses which are palpable 
enough in the character of his antagonist : as little 

* Liter, of Anc. Greece, i. 349. 

f Short Studies on Great Subjects, ii. 175. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 141 

susceptible to Hector's alternations of confidence and 
panic, as to his tender anxieties about his wife and 
child. The contrast between the two is very remark- 
able ; as strong, though of quite a different kind, as 
that between the two chief female characters in the 
poem — Helen, charming even in her frailty, attracting 
us and compelling our admiration in spite of our moral 
judgment ; Andromache, the blameless wife and mo- 
ther, whose charm is the beauty of true womanhood, 
and whose portrait, as drawn by the poet, bears strong 
witness by its sweetness and purity to the essential 
soundness of the domestic relations in the age which 
he depicts. 

The poem, as we have seen, ends somewhat abruptly. 
We learn nothing from it of the fate of Troy, except 
so far as we have been taught throughout the tale that 
the fortunes of the city and people depended wholly 
upon Hector. " Achilles' wrath " was the theme of the 
song, and now that this has been appeased, we wait for 
no further catastrophe. Yet, if Achilles has been the 
hero, it is remarkable that the poet's parting sympathies 
appear to rest, as those of the reader almost certainly will, 
with Hector. It would seem that Homer himself felt 
something of what he makes Jupiter express with regard 
to the Trojans — " They interest me, though they must 
needs perish." The Trojan hero must fall, or the 
glory of the Greek could not be consummated ; but 
the last words of the poem, as they record his funeral 
honours, so they express the poet's regretful eulogy : — 

" Such honours paid they to the good knight Hector." 

Virgil, in his ^Eneid, naturally exalts the glory of 
Hector, because it was his purpose to trace the origin 



142 THE ILIAD. 

of the Eomans from Troy ; but we need not wonder 
that in later days, when the Homeric legends were 
worked up into tales of Christian chivalry, Hector, and 
not Achilles, became the model of a Christian knight. 
When the great Italian poet drew his character of 
Orlando, as a type of chivalry, he had the Trojan hero 
in his mind. 

One of the earliest and most curious travesties of the 
Iliad — for it is hardly more, though made in all good 
faith, according to the taste of the times — was the work 
of an English troubadour, Benedict de St Maur, of the 
time of Henry II. It was reproduced, as a prose 
romance, in Latin, by Guido de Colonna, a Sicilian ; 
but is better known — so far as it can be said to be 
known at all — as the ' History of the Warres of the 
Greeks and Trojans,' by John Lydgate, monk of Bury 
St Edmunds, first printed in 1513. The writer pro- 
fessedly takes Colonna as his original. The heroes of 
the Iliad reappear as the knights of modern chivalry; 
they fight on horseback, observe all the rules of medie- 
val courtesy, and "fewtre their speres" at each other 
exactly in the style of the Companions of the Round 
Table. Agamemnon is very like Arthur, and Achilles 
Sir Lancelot, under other names. But Hector is here 
also plainly the favourite hero. Thersites figures as 
a dwarf, with all the malice and mischief peculiar, and 
in some degree permitted, to those imaginary types of 
humanity. The closing lines of Lydgate's third book 
will give some idea of the strange transformation which 
Homer's story undergoes in the hands of our medieval 
poet, and is a curious instance of the way in which the 
zealous churchman " improves " his pagan subject. He 
is describing the funeral rites of Hector : — 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 143 

* f And when Priam in full thrifty wyse 
Performed hath as ye have heard devyse, 
Ordained eke, as Guido * can you tell, 
A certain nombre of priestes for to dwell 
In the temple in their devotions, 
Continually with devout orisons 
For the soule of Hector for to pray. 
* * * * •* 

To which priestes the kyng gave mansyons, 
There to abide, and possessyons, 
The which he hath to them mortysed 
Perpetually, as ye have heard devysed, 
And while they kneel, pray, and wake, 
I caste fully me an end to make 
Finally of this my thirde booke 
On my rude manner as I undertooke." 

The way in which the Homeric characters are modern- 
ised in Chaucer and Dryden, and even in Shaks- 
peare's ' Troilus and Cressida/ is a deviation from their 
originals hardly more excusable, though less absurd, 
than this of Lydgate's. They copied, in fact, not from 
the original at all, but from the medieval corruptions 
of it. Kacine's tragedies are in a higher vein, and his 
Iphigenia, though not Homer's story, does more justice 
to some of Homer's characters : but after all, as has 
been well observed, " they are dressed in the Parisian 
fashions, with speech and action accordingly." t 

The Iliad, as has been already remarked, closes more 
abruptly than its modern title would seem to justify, 
for the Tale of Troy is left half untold. Imitators of 
the great bard followed him, and though their works 
are lost to us, the legends upon which they worked have 
been reproduced by later writers. The poems once known 
as the ' Little Iliad ' and the ' Sacking of Troy ' have 
left little more than their names, and some few frag- 

* Guido de Colonna. + Gladstone. 



144 THE ILIAD. 

ments which, do not raise much regret for the loss of 
the remainder ; but the leading events of which they 
treated are preserved in the works of the Greek drama- 
tists and of Virgil. It may not be out of place here 
to sketch briefly the sequel to Homer's story. 
v- Troy fell in that tenth year of the siege, though new 
and remarkable allies came to the aid of Priam. From 
the far north of Thrace came a band of Amazons — 
women - warriors who, in spite of their weaker sex, 
proved more than a match in battle for the men of 
Greece. Their queen Penthesilea was said to be the 
daughter of the War-god ; and under her leading, once 
more the Trojans tried their fortune in the open field, 
not unsuccessfully, until she too fell by the spear of 
Achilles. Proceeding to possess himself of her helmet, 
as the conqueror's spoil, he was struck with her remark- 
able beauty, and stood entranced for some moments in 
sorrow and admiration. It is the scene from which 
Tasso borrows his story of Clorinda, and which Spenser 
had in his mind when he makes Sir Artegal, after hav- 
ing unhelmed the fair Britomart in combat, let fall his 
sword at the sight of her " angel-face " — 

" His powerless hand, benumbed with secret fear, 
From his revengefull purpose shronke abacke, 
And cruel sword out of his fingers slacke 
Fell down to ground, as if the steel had sence 
And felt some rath, or sence his hand did lacke, 
Or both of them did think obedience 
To doe to so divine a Beautie's excellence." 

— B. IV. c. vi. st. 21. 

Thersites — who had by this time forgotten the chastise- 
ment inflicted on him by Ulysses for his scurrilous 
tongue — ventured a jest upon Achilles' sensibility, and 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 145 

was struck dead by a blow from the hero's unarmed 
hand. Next came upon the scene the tall Ethiopian 
Memnon, son of the Dawn, a warrior of more than 
mortal beauty, sent either from Egypt or from the king 
of Assyria (for the legends vary), with a contingent of 
fierce negro warriors, who carried slaughter into the 
Greek ranks, until Memnon too fell by the hand of 
the same irresistible antagonist. These were only 
brief respites for the doomed city. But it was not to 
fall by the hand of Achilles. Before its day of destruc- 
tion came, the Greek hero had met with the fate which 
he himself foresaw — which had been prophesied for 
him alike by his mother the sea-goddess, by the 
wondrous utterance of his horse Xanthus, and by the 
dying words of Hector. An arrow from Paris found 
the single vulnerable spot in his right heel, and 
stretched him where he had slain his Trojan enemy — 
before the Scsean gate. But his death, according to 
the legends, was no more like that of common mortals 
than his life had been. He does not go down into 
those gloomy regions where the ghosts of his friend 
Patroclus and his enemy Hector wander. It was not 
death, but a translation. The Greeks had prepared for 
him a magnificent funeral pile, but the body of the 
hero suddenly disappeared. His mother Thetis con- 
veyed it away to the island of Leuke in the Euxine 
Sea, to enjoy in that seclusion a new and perpetual life. 
So early is the legeud which the romance of Christen- 
dom adopted for so many of its favourites — notably for 
the English Arthur, borne by the three mysterious 
queens to 

" The island valley of Avilion," 
K 



146 THE ILIAD. 

where, it was long said and believed, he lay either in 
a charmed sleep or a passionless immortality. One 
legend ran that the Greek hero, in his happy island, 
was favoured with the society of Helen, whose match- 
less beauty he had much desired to see. 

His wondrous shield and armour — the masterpieces 
of Vulcan — were left by Thetis as a prize for " the 
bravest of the Greeks," and became almost as fatal a 
source of discord as the golden apple which had been 
labelled for "the fairest." Ulysses and Ajax were the 
most distinguished claimants, and when, as before, 
counsel was preferred to strength, Ajax went mad with 
vexation, and fell upon his own sword. Ulysses 
handed on the coveted armour to its rightful inheri- 
tor, the young Xeoptolemus, son of Achilles, who, in 
accordance with an oracle, had been sent for to take Troy. 
Still the city held out, secure so long as the sacred 
image of Minerva, the "Palladium," a gift from Jupiter 
himself, remained in the citadel : until Ulysses broke the 
spell by entering within the walls in disguise, and carry- 
ing it off. One quick eye discovered the venturous 
Greek, through his rags and self-inflicted wounds: 
Helen recognised him ; but she was weary of her guilty 
life, and became an excusable traitress in favour of her 
lawful husband. It was again the fertile brain of 
Ulysses which conceived the stratagem of the wooden 
horse ; and when the curiosity of the Trojans (against 
all ordinary probabilities, it must be confessed) dragged 
it inside the walls, the armed warriors whom it con- 
tained issued forth in the night, and opened the gates 
to their comrades. 

The details of the sack of the city are neither more 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 147 

nor less horrible than similar scenes which are un- 
happily too historical. Priam is slain at the altar of 
his house ; his family either share his fate, or are 
carried into captivity. Of the contradictory legends as 
to the fate of " Hector's Andromache " — as in Virgil's 
great poem she pathetically calls herself — the reader 
will gladly choose, with that poet, the least painful ver- 
sion, which leaves her settled at Buthrotus in Epirus, 
in a peaceful retirement full of gentle regrets, as the 
wife of Hector's brother Helenus. 

Of Helen and Menelaus we shall hear more in 
Homer's tale of the Wanderings of Ulysses. He says 
nothing of the scene which the later dramatists give 
us, by no means inconsistent with his own portrait of 
the pair, when at the taking of the city the outraged 
husband rushes upon the adulteress with uplifted sword, 
and drops his weapon at the sight of her well-remem- 
bered and matchless beauty. For the miserable sequel of 
Agamemnon's story we may refer also to' the Odyssey. 
Few of the Greek heroes returned home in peace. 
They had insulted the gods of Troy, and they were 
cursed with toilsome wanderings and long banishment 
like Ulysses, or met with a worse fate still. Diomed did 
not indeed leave his wife iEgiale a heart-broken widow, 
as Dione in her anger had predicted, but found on his 
return that she had consoled herself with another lover 
in his absence, and narrowly escaped assassination by 
her hand. Teucer was refused a home by his father, 
because he did not bring his brother Ajax back with 
him to the old man. The lesser Ajax was wrecked 
and drowned on his homeward voyage. Fate spared 
Nestor, old as he was, to return to his stronghold at 



148 THE ILIAD. 

Pylos ; but his son Antilochus had fallen in the flower 
of his age on the plains of Troy. The names of many 
of the wanderers were preserved in the colonies which 
they founded along the coasts of Greece and Italy, and 
the heroes of the great Siege of Troy spread its fame 
over all the then known world. 



END OF THE ILIAD. 



PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. 



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